Some character who calls himself Shyam Sundar Soundarajan has been calling up Xlers claiming to be an Xler and stranded without money. He then asks them to transfer money to the account of a friend with ICICI. This has happened a couple of times over the last few years. Some of the original mails are reproduced below.
Please beware of anyone calling themselves Shyam Sundar Soundarajan and requesting a transfer of money to an ICICI account.
The person may be getting information from facebook or orkut profiles.
Incident 1:
from Udit Sureka (2007 batch - incident happened 11 Oct 2008)
"Got a call from a pune STD booth from someone supposedly from the 2002 batch by the name of Shyam Sundar Soundararajan. Poor guy had lost his wallet in the Mumbai local (in Mumbai to get VISA stamping done, Working with Microsoft in Sydney he says) and is now in Pune. Trying to buy a ticket to Bangalore.
He has apparently managed to get in touch with ICICI bank branch employees and they have put him in touch with a Mr Pradeep Avachar (ICICI Bank account number 021 101 002 391, Ville Parle Branch), who is a Skypak branch head in Pune. If I were to transfer money to this account he would withdraw and give it to poor Shyam.
Doubt no. 1. How/why did he go to Pune after losing his wallet?
Doubt no. 2. How come he called someone from 2007 batch?
Doubt no. 3. VISA stamping in Mumbai?
Doubt no. 4. The bank account owner is in Pune but account in Mumbai?
All this can maybe still be explained. However, the clincher was:
Doubt no. 5. Why did he hang up as soon as i asked him our website's address? :)
Con artists these days dont put effort into getting their stories right!!..tsk tsk!!
PS: Those in the relevant department in ICICI would be well advised to check on the account number before the guy succeeds in defrauding someone. Quite obviously a fraud one.
Incident 2 :
Similar thing happened to a 2006 batch Xler 2 years ago
I received a call on Saturday afternoon from someone who claimed to be Mr Shyam Sunder, he said that he was 2000 batch XL-IR passout and currently working with Microsoft in Bangalore and had came to mumbai for visa stamping purpose but had lost his wallet in local train. So he was stranded in mumbai without cash and needed help. so he referred to *name removed*, a batch mate of mine and claimed that they had some common acquaintance. He said they although he had lost all his cards he had one of ICICI left with him which he was not sure of that was it still operational or not. So he will visit the branch and check out the status and let me know the account number so that i can transfer the fund for the bangalore ticket to that account.
after about another hour or so he calls back saying that his account is not functional but he has talked to an ICICI employee and ICICI guy was ready to allow him use his account to facilitate fund transfer. So he asked me to get to the net access point so that he can give me the account details. I was apprehensive so i asked him where did he got my reference from. he said that he got it through some XL alumni group site.
I also asked him about his XL mates and he referred to *name removed* of
1999 batch whom i realised was an active member of lots of sites so i asked him about his prof @ XL and he mentioned someone named prof shastri whom i hadn't heard of. so i was now very highly confused.
this guy wanted me to transfer 4-5K to him and didnt give me single fact which could convince me that he is indeed and xler, infact after that when I asked him about Gango's accounts lectures he confirmed that they were very tough. So now i was very doubtful about him so i said that i cannot transfer the fund due to technical problems on site so better if he can meet me personally than we can work things out. I gave him the public place just outside dadar station(he said that he was in that area). but he never showed up there neither did he call me again.
Incident 3:
This April one of my colleagues also from XL had the exact same story enacted with him. Reportedly he rattled off quite a few names of my colleague's batchmates.
You have been warned! The scamster unfortunately (for him) doesn't realise how tightly xlers are networked. Lets use this to our advantage and make sure he doesn't fool any more people.
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