The Mumbai police's cybercrime unit has nabbed two men from Bihar and Jharkhand for allegedly scamming an accountant out of ₹48.60 lakh through a Boss scam. The fraud took place between August 14 and August 16 and involved someone pretending to be the victim's CEO.
This scam sees fraudsters pretending to be senior executives, tricking employees into transferring large sums from company accounts. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre had warned back on June 22, 2026, about fraudsters using malware to control executives' devices, manipulating employees into making unauthorized money transfers.
The case was filed against the suspects on February 26, 2026, under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act. After their arrest, the two were brought before the Girgaon magistrate court on August 19 and were remanded to police custody until August 25.
Investigations showed the pair had ties to eight others arrested on July 25, 2026, for similar scams in Mumbai, involving about ₹10.40 crore in fraudulent transactions. Police have recovered ₹6 crore so far, according to Cybercrime branch Constable Pratap Jadhav.
The accountant, employed by a pipe company in Mumbai, was contacted using a fake SIM card; the scammer altered the profile to mimic the CEO's account, claiming he was in a meeting and urgently needed money transferred. Thinking he was helping his boss, the accountant sent ₹48.60 lakh to a mule account in Kolkata.
After the complaint, police traced the fraudulent number to Mad Khan, an Airtel SIM vendor. This led to the arrest of his accomplice, Suraj Kumar Pradeep Kumar Saw, or Vishal, near Jamtara in Jharkhand on August 16, 2026. The SIM used in the scam belonged to an army soldier recently back from duty in Telangana, who had tried switching his Jio SIM to Airtel, providing documents for e-KYC.
Khan deceived the soldier, claiming activation issues, and sent the activated SIM to his accomplice in Jharkhand for the scam. Khan also activated other SIMs using fake documents and sold eight SIMs to Vishal for ₹6,000.
Authorities seized 161 SIM cards, a megaphone, and a POCO phone with the Airtel Mitra app used for activating SIM cards. The defrauded amount of ₹48.60 lakh has been held by the police, and investigations continue.
Following these incidents, the Securities Exchange Board of India issued a warning on July 17, 2026, advising regulated entities and listed companies to stay vigilant against such scams and not to transfer funds based solely on social media communications.
