Posing as Bengaluru civic commissioner, crooks try to fleece officials

Bengaluru: Bangalore Development Authority commissioner and senior IAS officer Major Manivannan P has filed a complaint, stating that miscreants were trying to fleece people using his name.In his complaint to central cybercrime police station, Manivannan said the con came to light recently when a few BDA officials contacted him, asking whether he had sent WhatsApp messages asking for monetary assistance. They showed him screenshots of such messages from an unknown number, carrying his display picture. The message boxes carried texts asking for Rs 10,000 or Rs 15,000, with the words "required urgently".Realising it was the work of cybercriminals, Manivannan alerted all his staff and other colleagues.The miscreants are yet to be traced, said a senior police officer. "Miscreants hide their IP addresses using a VPN by redirecting their internet traffic through a secure, encrypted tunnel to a remote server. This process masks their actual identity and makes their online activity appear to originate from the VPN server's location instead of their own. This makes it difficult to trace their location. Similar cases where miscreants copied Facebook accounts of a few former city police commissioners, seeking money a few year back, remain unsolved for the same reason," the cop said.