Meesho Employee Gets Scam Message For Payment From Person Posing As CEO

With rising technology, there has also been an increase in cybercrimes. Unfortunately, many people have fallen victim to these and the number has continued to grow in the past few years. An employee of the online shopping platform Meesho recently brought attention to a new kind of phishing used by fraudsters to deceive consumers by posing as the Chief Executive Officer of the business. 

Shikhar Saxena took to Twitter to share the same. In the screenshot, the scammer, pretending to be the Founder and CEO of Meesho, Vidit Aatrey, texted Mr Saxena asking him to make a purchase for a client. He even promised to reimburse him later. “I am currently on a conference call with a client and I need to provide this client with some gift. Can you confirm if you can make this purchase from Paytm? I will reimburse you,” the message from the fraudster read.

Latest scam in the startup world – message from the CEO. pic.twitter.com/IIsZYYQsbx

— Shikhar Saxena (@_shikharsaxena) April 6, 2023

Fortunately, Mr Saxena did not fall prey to the fraud and could identify that it was a fraudster and not his boss. Sharing the screenshot, he wrote on the microblogging website, “Latest scam in the startup world – message from the CEO.”

Since being shared, his post has amassed over a lakh views and many people were shocked to see the incident. Several users also shared how they received similar messages. 

“A friend got a similar message from someone pretending to be his boss asking for PhonePe Apple Vouchers,” said a user.

“I get the same but the twist is via email. That too from CEO of my current working company. Idk how they find out,” remarked a second person.

A third user added, “This has been happening with multiple Private Companies.They don’t even bother changing the message template. The message is always from the CEO :D”

“There is a term for this, I think it’s called “CEO Fraud” Usually it’s done through mail. But WhatsApp is even better, they don’t have to put much efforts,” added a person. 

“My Company gave us very good and interactive tutorial on cyber security named CEO fraud which extensively covered such cases,” said a person.

A Delhi-based software engineer also shared a screenshot of his chat with a con artist who claimed to be the CEO of Snapdeal Kunal Bahl.

It’s a flattering yet a pretty dumb con in the scheme of cons, and I don’t think anyone falls for this. In case you were planning to, please don’t! 😁

PS: Only minor impressive thing these con artists seem to have accomplished is getting their hands on my current WhatsApp DP. https://t.co/59zQS0C9xC

— Kunal Bahl (@1kunalbahl) April 7, 2023

This tweet also caught the attention of Mr Bahl. He said, “It’s a flattering yet a pretty dumb con in the scheme of cons, and I don’t think anyone falls for this. In case you were planning to, please don’t! PS: Only minor impressive thing these con artists seem to have accomplished is getting their hands on my current WhatsApp DP.”