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Fraudsters with X factor
Updated On: 21 January, 2024 06:51 AM IST | Mumbai | Gautam S Mengle
What’s it like to be conned in a social media fraud? Two victims of crowdfunding scams speak of the quickly-built trust and utter disbelief
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Illustration/Uday Mohite
For scores of people active on X across India, the last two months have brought forth revelations—and not good ones. Two users of X, still better known as Twitter, were the masterminds of mindboggling frauds that made news. Both are alleged to have extracted lakhs from users in the name of fundraising.
The first one, who went by the name Annie Thakur, claimed to run a non-profit for the welfare of stray animals and underprivileged children. This individual—now believed to be a man named Dilip Mandal—first created a detailed profile by using pictures of a random female Instagram user in various locations, coupled with photographs of stray dogs and children from marginalised families. Then, ‘she’ upped the ante by posting videos, some on Metrorails, others in the gym. This created the perfect mirage of a socially conscious individual, before ‘she’ got down to crowdsourcing funds. It worked. People donated by the thousands and experienced joy when ‘Annie’ posted screenshots of their payments with heartfelt thank you messages, using imagined names for disadvantged children and strays.
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