In a social media post, the seventh-semester student detailed the workings of the fraud to warn others against falling for it. He admitted to feeling ‘pretty stupid’ about the entire ordeal as it could have been easily avoided.
A college student driving Rapido in Bengaluru for some ‘extra pocket money’ was scammed out of Rs 1,000 through a sophisticated “hospital emergency” trick.
The setup for the scam involved the scammers making a pickup request from Lakshmi Hospital in RT Nagar. As the student accepted the delivery, one of the scammers called him using a different number. He sounded frantic, claiming that a woman was admitted who needed to be discharged but his UPI was not working at the hospital’s billing desk. Willing to help him, the student gave away his mother’s number to transfer the money.
“He begged me to help, saying he’d send me Rs 5,000 for the hospital bill plus Rs 300 extra for my trouble. Subsequently, she received a boilerplate bank SMS stating that Rs 5,000 had been credited to her account.
The student said he wanted to give his earnings to his mother to make her happy, but the incident turned into an ‘absolute nightmare’ that left him feeling gutted. When someone pulls the “hospital emergency” card, your logical brain just shuts off. You aren’t thinking about scams; you just want to help someone in a desperate medical situation,” the student said. “Believing it was real, she forwarded me Rs 5,000 from her own account so I could handle the guy’s payments,” the student highlighted.
