‘Never mess with a developer’: Gurgaon techie bluffs scammers behind PAN card fraud, netizens call it ‘reverse scam’

Amid a significant rise in fraud cases involving scammers seeking details like PAN cards and one-time passwords (OTPs) to steal money, a software engineer shared an incident where he outsmarted scammers. The Gurgaon-based techie had received a message from fraudsters who pretended to be a representative of HDFC bank.

An X user, who goes by the name of Gaurav Sharan, shared a screenshot of his conversation with a scammer. The conversation begins with a message which appears to have come from an HDFC bank representative at first hand. Realising that the message was a fraud, Sharan chose to reply to the scammer with a witty response, “Ok Bhaiya”.

Surprisingly, he received another message from the scammer instructing him to update the PAN number immediately. “Just now, open the link and update your pan No. (sic)”

“Easy to find it is a scamming website. I am a software engineer, I can help you redesign the page,” Sharan responded.

In his message, Sharan also offered to help the scammers redesign the page so that it would look exactly like HDFC net banking site and asked ₹20,000 for the task.

Later, the scammer asked Sharan to send a sample of his work on WhatsApp. The engineer shared the conversation's screenshot on X with the caption, “Never mess with a developer”.

So far the post has received nearly 25,700 views and several comments. Many social media users reacted to the post and shared their hilarious reaction to the incident. Many called it a “reverse scam”.

“Why did you censor the phone number? Protecting the privacy of a scammer,” wrote a social media user on X.

Another user jokingly asked whether he received ₹20,000 as per the conversation, “To mile ki nahi 20k?”

Another X user asked, “What happened next ??”

“Are bhai official HDFC walo ko bhejo; pata nahi kon logo ko hire Kia hai UI/UX k lie,” read another comment on the post.

“Playing with innocence of scammer! This is not correct.”

“I would charge 50k .Then would scam him.”