BHOPAL: Commoners in Madhya Pradesh and outside beware. Cyber fraudsters are on the prowl to dupe people in the name of IAS officers posted as collectors in various districts of the central Indian state.Unidentified cyber criminals have used pictures and details of at least six district collectors of Madhya Pradesh, including a female IAS officer to dupe people, including the colleagues and relatives of the concerned collectors.The six district collectors, include Dipak Saxena (Jabalpur), Priyank Mishra (Dhar), Sanskriti Jain (Seon), Ravindra Choudhary (Shivpuri), Tarun Bhatnagar (Shahdol) and Dharnedra Kumar Jain (Umaria).The fraudsters have either created fake social media IDs (particularly facebook pages) using the names and pictures of these collectors or created WhatsApp accounts using pictures of these collectors in the display picture (DP) of the account, to pose as the collectors.Subsequently, distress messages, particularly seeking monetary help, have been made through these fake social media accounts to the colleagues, subordinates and relatives of the six collectors over the last three days.Coming to know about these developments, the six districts have officially issued advisory via social media platforms to people to be alert with such fake social media accounts/pages which are using the names of the collectors to dupe others.Importantly, in the case of the Jabalpur district collector Dipak Saxena, one of his relatives reportedly fell prey to the fraudulent designs of the cyber criminals. The concerned relative of the Jabalpur district collector, instead of enquiring whether the new WhatsApp account actually belonged to Saxena or not, considered the new account (containing the collector’s picture as DP) as genuine and subsequently transferred Rs 25,000 to help the collector following the distress message/message seeking urgent monetary help.Importantly, even the Facebook ID of the Jabalpur collector, reportedly was recently hacked. Acting in the six matters, the police in concerned districts are investigating the matter, after the issuance of public advisories. The police chief of one of the districts, while confirming the development to this TNIE said, “We’re probing all possible angles, including the possibility of a common racket of cyber fraudsters (operating from states infamous for having such fraudsters) targeting people in the name of officials and politicians of MP.”
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