In an era when words such as Pandemic, stay at home – work from home, curfew, isolation and quarantine are used regularly, one would have thought that crimes and the number of crimes they used to see and hear of regularly will be decreased at least for the time being.
Proving such thoughts to be wrong, news has emerged that a few individuals have been trying to scam people by tricking them to believe that they are alleged for crimes they are not related to at all, and expecting them to pay bribes or ransom to drop such charges.
An individual whose parents almost got tricked into one such incident had tweeted about what had happened, giving a clear picture of what the scammers had tried to do, but failed at the end.
1/13 Now that I've managed to process what happened, I'd like to share how my parents were terrorized and almost scammed into paying money.Yesterday during the early afternoon my dad answered a phone call on the landline. The individual that called has said to be calling from the
— Vinod $S (@vinodSudharshan) April 28, 2020
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Full Text from Vinod Sudarshan on what happened to his parents ?
Now that I’ve managed to process what happened, I’d like to share how my parents were terrorized and almost scammed into paying money. Yesterday during the early afternoon my dad answered a phone call on the landline. The individual that called has said to be calling from the DIG’s office and has asked the name of the person to whom the line belongs to. Dad gave mom’s name, as it’s on her name. Dad was then told that this phone line was being monitored for the past two months in connection to the recent arrests made on the easter attack incident.
The reason being that they had been monitoring 10 individuals that had had close connection to the recently arrested lawyer and one of the 10 had called four times to my parent’s landline, out of which two were answered. At this point my dad was told that they would send a jeep to my parent’s house in half an hour and that my mom would be picked up with the assistance of a lady constable. The caller has said that he sympathized with my dad’s position and wanted to help. Dad was then given another phone number and was asked to call the DIG directly to find an alternative. When dad called with his mobile phone, he got to speak to an individual that claimed to be the DIG. The instructions were, “if you want to be helped, say nothing, listen to what I say”. The same story was repeated, as to how my mom was going to be arrested, will be remanded for 14 days, while they can look into the call history in detail. But there was another way, to speed up the call history investigation, they can place an urgent request at the phone provider which will cost around 10k. And if my dad agrees to pay the 10k, then there won’t be any arrest necessary at this point and they can carry on their investigation. Dad received new instructions again, do not hang up the phone at any point, do not speak to anyone else ( not even to my mom), drive to an ATM and pay the money with eZ cash. Dad took my mom and drove out looking for an ATM for nearly 2 hours, all the while this person was on the line telling dad how humiliating it would be if my mom would get arrested at home, that they have been asking around the neighbors for information and so on. After driving to different ATMs and not managing to pay, my parents were stopped by some cops that did not allow them to pass through.
At this point the person that was threatening my parents had momentarily hung up and my dad for the first time in two hours actually had time to think what was happening. As the individual called my dad again, both very much agitated, dad quickly dropped my mom off at uncle’s place to find help. Uncle has instructed them to drive to the nearest police station, which they did. My dad somehow managed to keep the caller distracted while he explained the situation. The cop has then taken the phone from my dad, at which point the call got disconnected. Calling the number back has led to nothing. A clear case of how some lowlives are using ongoing issues to scam people.
I’m glad that my parents did the right thing in getting help from the cops when they did and I’m so thankful to the cops for helping them. The cops apparently were very understanding and sympathetic towards them, even at times when they have to deal with the ongoing pandemic crisis and curfew.
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Vinod Sudarshan confirmed to the NewsWire that a complaint had been lodged at Wattala Police over the incident.