A scammer targeted a senior vice president at Unacademy in Bengaluru with a fake UPI money transfer scam. The incident, which Hardik Pandya, shared on X, formerly Twitter, involved a seemingly interested buyer contacting him after he listed an iPad on OLX.
The conversation soon moved to WhatsApp where the culprit, posing as "Dilip Vikas," offered immediate payment. The scammer sent screenshots of a supposed money transfer exceeding the agreed amount by Rs 10,000 and requested Mr Pandya to return the difference. However, upon checking his account, Pandya discovered he only received a Re 1 transaction likely used to verify account details. The remaining amount was never sent, exposing the fake transfer and attempted scam.
Along with the screenshot, Mr Pandya wrote, "UPI scam from this morning. Posted an ad for an iPad on OLX. Scammer gets in touch, takes it to WhatsApp and offers to transfer money instantly. Then does this -"
In a subsequent tweet, he wrote, "Obviously, it doesn't take much to know this raised all the alarms from the get go. But the imitation transaction messages sent manually by him was the funniest part!"
See the post here:
The post soon went viral and several users praised Mr Pandya's wits and shared similar experiences.
A user wrote, "OLX is full of such scams right now. There are people pretending to army officers too."
Another user commented, "Olx and quikr are common grounds for these scammers and they will push you to pull down the ad."
The third user commented, "Some offer to transfer money instantly and then send a QR code to scan. They claim "If you scan this, money will be transferred to you. It is the only way"
"I think even OLX hires some fake buyers. It is tough to proof but these guys really press you to delete the AD and say they are coming to buy from you without negotiating. They never come and you have to now upload a paid AD on OLX," a user wrote.
"Always keep 0 balance in your bank account when trying to sell anything on OLX and such platforms. Same happened with me when i was trying to sell my desktop. Only thing was that the scammer got scammed by me for Rs 1. Red flag: asking you to close the ad before payment," the fifth user commented.
