Man posing as hotel owner texts accountant to transfer Rs 38.3 lakh

Navi Mumbai: A 31-year-old senior accountant at a Roadpali hotel in Kalamboli node has registered a cheating case against a fraudster, impersonating as the hotel’s owner, and swindling him of Rs 38.3 lakh. The accountant was made to transfer the amount from the hotel’s bank account to the fraudster.

As per the FIR by Hitesh Dahiwalikar, on June 2, while he was at work, he received a WhatsApp message with the name of the hotel owner Himanshu Agrawal, asking how much balance was in the company’s bank account, to which Dahiwalikar replied Rs 40.2 lakh. Then, he was told to transfer Rs 38.3 lakh to two bank accounts in Punjab and Gujarat. Since Agrawal used to send WhatsApp messages to Dahiwalikar for transferring money to client’s account, he did accordingly.

The cheating came to light on June 4, when the scamster again sent a WhatsApp message to Dahiwalikar asking him to transfer more amount to a bank account, when the hotel owner Agrawal was present in his cabin at the hotel premises. Dahiwalikar suspected something amiss and asked the owner about the message sent by him to transfer money, to which Agrawal denied. Subsequently, an FIR of cheating was then registered against an unidentified accused at Kalamboli police station.