it honestly felt like a genius business move at the time but it ended up costing us ₹12270... money that we literally did not have and had to take out a loan for and now we are just sitting here struggling to even figure out how to pay it back...
I am currently a student right now doing my bachelors in chemistry at a science clg in Kolkata... tbh life is already hard enough with expenses and all so my best friend and I thought that we would start a small side hustle on campus just to survive the month and see the response at our clg... we see everyone chugging Monster and Red Bull during exam season right so our plan was simple just buy them in bulk from some wholesaler and sell them to guys in our clg below the MRP and make some profit...
We were searching on Justdial for suppliers and got a text on WhatsApp from this number 8081901679... being science students we thought we were so smart and analytical you know so we told him to send proof of his business and he sent us this official looking GST Registration certificate under the name Santosh Shankar Parab... we went straight to the govt portal and checked it and bro it was active... this was our first and biggest mistake just seeing a verified name on a govt site made us drop our guard completely
Then he sent us the invoice and honestly it was full of spelling mistakes... even my own name was spelled so wrong it was funny because he had written "cock" instead of "coke" on the bill and we were so stupid for laughing at that... we didnt even realize that poor grammar and weird formatting on official documents is like the biggest red flag for a scam... if the invoice looks like some guy made it in 5 mins on his phone while sitting on a toilet well it probably was
This scammer literally played our minds perfectly... we sent the first payment but then he started asking for extra money for some driver issues and bill generation errors... we hesitated and were like no way we are sending more... thats when the Oscar winning acting started and he actually started crying on the phone guys... like his voice was breaking and he told us his wife just had a baby and he is struggling so bad financially and he would literally get fired by his boss if this delivery didnt go through
We just felt so bad for him... we are just broke students struggling to survive and he sounded like a desperate father trying to feed his family so we empathized and sent the money... later some other guy claiming to be the owner called and started screaming at santosh for not doing his job properly because he made us pay like 2k first then 1.4k then he told us to send 5000rs as minimum order requirement is for 5k only... so just to clear it so we could finally get our drinks we took another 5k of loan from slice
just so u guys know how fast they trapped us here is the exact timeline of how the money went down
first payment was 2000 rs to some guy named saurabh prajapati at 2:15 pm
then they made up the first error so we sent 1410 rs to anand batham at 2:42 pm
then the whole crying drama happened so we sent 3360 rs to rohit at 4:04 pm
then the owner called and pressurized us about the 5k minimum order so we sent 5000 rs to satyam at 5:07 pm
and finally they asked for delivery fees so we sent 500 rs to anand again at 5:29 pm because he also told us that we will get our refund as soon as we send the 500rs delivery charge to him
literally 12270 rs gone in just about 3 hours
we waited till 630pm but nothing came... then i tried calling him but he asked for another 300rs because his drivers truck or smth ran out of fuel so he needed to refuel
i tried calling him again and again to get any status update but nothing... the owner picked up the call and i told him to give me his no and he said its his phone only and santosh is just an empoyee of his... he told that its getting this late only because we arent sending him the remaining 300rs
it was 19:30 smth and we didnt send it because we had nothing left
then he just cut the call on our face and blocked us completely... one tick on whatsapp profile picture gone
Now my friend and I are out 6000 rupees each... I know to some rich kids 6k is nothing but for us its our entire monthly college allowance gone... we have literally nothing left for our own food or canteen expenses for the next few months and we have a loan hanging over our heads... im just lying in bed feeling so helpless and dumb right now
Im writing all this down so you guys dont make the same dumb mistakes we did
Typos are a warning sign guys if there are shit tons of spelling mistakes its a fake bill real companies have software for this stuff
Do not just trust a GST number because scammers literally steal identities of real innocent businesses all the time
Professionalism matters a lot real wholesale owners dont cry on the phone about their pregnant wives to get a payment cleared
The sunk cost trap is real they just count on you feeling like you already sent some money so you might as well send the rest to save the deal
We have already filed a formal complaint at the 1930 cyber helpline right after this happened... the payments were made through gpay and slice and the money was deducted from three different banks in total... I have attached all the necessary screenshots below with our personal data blurred out... im posting this here to get any advice whether its legal or digital if possible to help us track the scammers down or even get our money back if possible... we were so arrogant thinking we were too smart to get fooled and yet here we are... just stay vigilant guys dont trust anyone blindly.
total amount that we are fucked over with is 2000+1410+3360+5000+500+(117+106, loan interest) = ₹12,493 ;/
im feeling so dumb and embarassed to even share this with anybody, im trying to cope by laughing it off and just accepting the reality, wanna cry but cant, it feels like a dream... thank you for reading till the end...
Proof of Scam - https://postimg.cc/gallery/ZSL2k8f