5 times celebs took to social media over bizarre scams

The caller insisted her power would be cut even though she had already paid, then tried to get her to download an app to resolve it. That app is the real trap, since it's how these scams get at your bank account. Her answer shut the call down, and the clip works as a short lesson in not letting a threat rush you.

Soni Razdan told her Instagram followers that someone posing as Delhi Customs had called to accuse her of ordering illegal drugs. They asked for her Aadhaar number and for money, but she didn't fall for it. She tagged Mumbai Police and pointed out how easy it is to get confused when you get a call like this. This is the template for the "digital arrest" family of scams, and a well-known name admitting she was a target makes everyone else less embarrassed to report one.

This one is properly strange. Sood posted a deepfake video call that a follower had sent him. In it, an impersonator talks to a family needing money for medical treatment and promises them financial help. The scam works because of his real reputation: he helped many families during the pandemic when people were jobless. Scammers borrowed that goodwill, and he warned people publicly.

Prosenjit Chatterjee went the other way and escalated a grievance as far up as he could. His order wasn't a scam in the criminal sense, but the app's behaviour felt like one. He placed a Swiggy order on 3 November. The status changed to "delivered" even though no food had reached him. Three days later, he posted an open letter on Twitter tagging the Prime Minister and the West Bengal Chief Minister. The internet had a field day. One user said it was an international problem rather than a national one and suggested involving the United Nations. His defence was a fair one, though: garments can arrive late, he said, but food can't.

This is the weirdest of the five, and it ended best. In July 2019, Bose posted a video from his room at a five-star hotel. He had been charged Rs 442.50 for two bananas, which the bill listed as a “fruit platter”. His caption was a deadpan “who said fruit wasn’t harmful to your existence?”, with the hashtags #goingbananas and #potassiumforkings. The joke turned into an inquiry: fresh fruit is exempt from GST, and the Chandigarh Excise and Taxation Department fined the hotel Rs 25,000 for charging the tax. The aftershocks kept coming. A Twitter user soon posted a bill of Rs 1,700 for two boiled eggs at another luxury hotel and tagged Bose, asking whether it was time to protest again.

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