Kozhikode: Actor Mala Parvathy narrowly escaped a scam attempt, where fraudsters tried to trap her by claiming that a courier had been held back. Mala Parvathy revealed that she managed to avoid the scam by acting quickly and intelligently.

The fraudsters pretended to be Mumbai police officers and held her in a virtual arrest for nearly an hour, even sending fake ID cards. Mala Parvathy said she was able to realise it was a scam in time and avoided any financial loss.

She was in Madurai for a shoot. After finishing her night shoot and waking up in the morning, she received a call around 10 am. The caller said a courier had been held back, and a man named Vikram Singh spoke to her. They claimed that her Aadhaar card had been misused to send an illegal package to Taiwan. When she asked for more details, they inquired about her address and bank information. They said the package contained five passports, three bank credit cards, a laptop and 200 grams of MDMA. To further convince her, they sent her an ID card claiming they were from the Mumbai Crime Branch and kept her on a live call, asking her to cooperate. They even claimed that one person had died and another had been arrested in Bombay as part of the case, according to Mala Parvathy.

The conversation took place on WhatsApp. In the meantime, she quickly searched for their ID card on Google and became suspicious when she noticed that it lacked the Ashoka stupa emblem. Her manager immediately recognised it as a trap. When they handed the phone to the executive producer, the fraudsters cut the call. Mala Parvathy also mentioned that the scammers had told her she would be under surveillance for 72 hours.