A leading merchant, thinking he was paying for scrap from Larsen & Toubro (L&T), ended up being duped of Rs 1 crore by a fraudster who had sent him an email where ‘Larsen’ was spelt as ‘Lasren’. According to the Mumbai police’s cyber cell, the complainant made an initial payment of Rs 5 crore in June on an account shared by L&T through a client communication email ID.

He received the scrap a few days after making the payment, but before paying the rest of his dues to L&T, he received an email from a fake ID claiming that the payment accounts had changed. “He didn’t verify the details with L&T officials before initiating the payment. The fraudster had created an email account similar to the actual one,” a cyber cell officer said.