03/09/2022
FRAUD ALERT A gentleman called me 2 days back claiming to be calling from Sun Pharma, a MNC, headquartered in the USA. He claimed to be calling from their Guwahati office. Seemed like a well spoken Gentleman and conversed both in fluent English and Axomiya. He asked for a quotation for 8 deluxe rooms for 15 days. Being the lean season in Kaziranga ( National park is closed during this time), firstly our rooms are available and this looked good to carry us through to the lean months. I gave our best rates possible as per MAP plan. He asked whether we have GST or not which of course we have. (Otherwise his game plan would have been different is my thought). We were also interacting via email. He had Sun Pharma logo pasted all over his emails too. His take was, the local hotels cannot file IGST, only the chain of hotels can, as their billing address and source of payment would be different. We could file but they would not be getting the input. Frankly I do not have In-depth knowledge about the whole GST business and asked our accountant to speak with him. Our Accountant concluded that whatever the Gentleman is saying is correct and that the gentleman is quite knowledgeable. He spoke in fluent Bengali with him . I spoke to my husband too who immediately said the man seems to be a fraud and that is his gut feeling and in some corners, mine too. The gentleman asked me to make a pro forma invoice and send it them and add an amount of 19006 as a tender amount, which would later be refunded with the advance payment. What struck us as odd was that he did not ask for a menu . I had the menu prepared btw. But he never asked. I sent the pro forma invoice but of course did not send the amount. But he did not press. He only said that my payment would be delayed by a day and that he needed to feed the UTR of the rtgs payment in his system to get the process working. He provided the correct address and GST of Sun Pharma btw. I called up my friend Utpal Kumar Baishya. He is working in the pharmaceutical company for a long long time and requested him to do some digging. He happens to know almost every one in Sun PHarma Guwahati and they validated our suspicions. The legal team of Sun Pharma are supposedly taking action. So this post is just to create awareness that frauds find innovative ways to commit daylight robbery so as to say. So stay vigilant. Vigilance saved our precious hard earned 19006.
