Businesswoman residing near Park Street voice deepfake

On November 3, 2024, a businesswoman operating a florist shop near Park Street in Kolkata was defrauded of Rs 1.2 lakh after receiving phone calls from an individual using AI-cloned audio to mimic a long-time acquaintance. The victim transferred the funds under the false impression that she was assisting with an urgent medical emergency involving the acquaintance's child.

What happened

The incident began between 6:09 pm and 6:27 pm when the victim received two consecutive calls from an unknown number. The caller, using a voice identical to her acquaintance, claimed his child was hospitalized and requested financial assistance. The scammer proposed a scheme where a friend would transfer money to the victim via UPI, which she would then forward to a designated account, citing network issues on the sender's end. To bolster the deception, the scammer sent fabricated digital receipts via WhatsApp showing fake UPI confirmations for Rs 28,000 and Rs 95,000. Trusting both the voice and the visual evidence, the victim transferred the total sum of Rs 1.2 lakh in two installments. The fraud was discovered only after the victim checked her bank statements and realized no funds had been credited to her account. Police have registered a case under the BNS and the Information Technology Act, with investigators currently tracing the transaction trails and the origin of the calls. While authorities are standardizing procedures to rule out internal involvement, the primary investigation focuses on the use of AI-driven voice cloning software to replicate the acquaintance's tone and speech patterns.