Covid fraudsters target Kolkata universities with fake emails

KOLKATA: Educational institutes have become the target of cyber frauds who are seeking money in the name of relief or to help “colleagues admitted to hospitals with Covid and in distress”. The gangs have so far targeted several senior academics and used the email IDs of the departmental head of a central Kolkata university and theVC of a university in north Kolkata.
“The modus operandi is an old one. Taking advantage of the Covid lockdown, the accused generated fake email IDs resembling the originals or even hacked into the original ones. The accused then sent mails to a few junior academics claiming their seniors were facing trouble and needed financial help due to Covid. While most realized the mails were fake, a few did fall into the trap. Among those who responded to the emails were professors from Presidency University and Rabindra Bharati University. One of the fake IDs used has been identified as executivedirector1910@gmail.com.
Kolkata cops claimed they have started collecting evidence after the CBI sounded an alert on such scams last Monday. Several cases targeting professors have been reported from Mumbai and Delhi during the lockdown too. “Online fraudsters are cashing in on the pandemic to dupe unsuspecting people. A professor at IIT-Bombay was duped of Rs 2 lakh, which he transferred by way of cash vouchers to treat his colleague and a relative “affected by Covid”.
Most of those duped said he or she had received an email in their official account from the personal account of their colleague saying they were admitted to the ICU and needed financial help. Most said they didn’t doubt the genuineness as it had come from their colleagues’ account through which they communicated often.