When Rajesh Shenoy received a distressed text from his best friend first thing in the morning, requesting an urgent loan of R5.8 lakh, the Powai-based businessman didn`t think twice. "If I don`t help him, who will, I thought. And so, I immediately transferred the amount to the account number sent to me via email," Shenoy said in a statement to the police. He rang up the friend, asking if he`d received the money only to hear the biggest blow of his life. "He said he didn`t need the money, and had never sent me the text. The email ID looked so legitimate that I didn`t bother verifying it. I had been conned, and I realised it too late." This 2019 cyber crime case was never solved.

That same year, 26-year-old Masha Arabi`s colleague experienced a similar fate. A 22-year-old, who had newly joined the PR firm Arabi worked for, received an email from a person pretending to be their boss. "The email ID was similar to our boss`s, so my colleague didn`t think about its authenticity. It said that our boss needed R10,000 transferred to her account, and that the amount would be credited back to my colleague`s bank with her first pay cheque. After the transaction, she sent a screenshot of the receipt to the boss, who was confused at that moment. That is when we figured this was a phishing attack." An FIR was lodged at Santa Cruz police station, but nothing came of it.