Last Friday, Azees Moosa, State vice president of Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association (KHRA), received a call from a man who introduced himself as a lawyer.
He alleged that a rubber band was found in a biriyani he had bought for his child from Mr. Moosa’s hotel in the city. Mr. Moosa stiffly countered it saying that his hotel did not use rubber bands or stapler pins. Following this, the man threatened to take legal recourse with a rider that the matter could be settled if a “compensation” of ₹10,000 was paid towards the expenses of scanning his child to verify whether she had consumed the rubber band.
“During a brief period when the call got disconnected, I had alerted the Central police Inspector who asked me to play along. He called again demanding that money be sent through Google Pay immediately. I feigned not to have any online transaction facility and instead asked him to come in person to collect the money,” said Mr. Moosa.
He said he would give it a thought and rang back on Sunday morning. To create an impression of believability, Mr. Moosa bargained and got the amount whittled down to ₹5,000. Later in the day, a youngster from Fort Kochi came to collect the money only to be detained by the police.
It emerged that the man owed the youngster ₹1,000 from a time when they worked together. The youngster was asked to collect the money and send the rest to him but had no clue about the fraud being played out.
However, by that time, the police had tracked down the mobile tower location of the man to Wayanad, though it emerged that he was in Bengaluru the day he claimed to have bought the biriyani. He was eventually nabbed from a kitchen design firm at Sulthan Bathery where he worked, by a team from the Central police.
“Since his arrest was publicised, we have been getting numerous calls from hoteliers about his attempts to cheat them. In fact, he had blackmailed a major bread maker into paying him ₹10,000. He often started with the same demand but climbed down to as little ₹500 in many cases,” said a police officer.
KHRA State president G. Jayapal said they had publicised the case through social media groups and issued advisory to their members. “We have asked them to personally verify the veracity of complaints through the local units concerned before conceding any financial demands. Fraudsters are increasingly exploiting the situation to make quick bucks. On Friday, someone had impersonated as an enforcement official in Malappuram to fleece hoteliers,” he said.
