‘Company ke accounts check karke…’: Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma exposes ‘scamsters’ impersonating him

Online payment platform Paytm's Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Vijay Shekhar Sharma, exposed scammers who tried to impersonate him through messages posing as the CEO of the payments giant, according to a social media post on Wednesday, 21 May 2025. 

“Impersonating myself to me,” said Sharma, sharing this incident with his social media followers on the platform X.

According to the screenshots shared by the CEO, the digital fraudster was attempting to impersonate Sharma. The scammer started by introducing himself as “Vijay Shekhar Sharma” and stating that it was his new number, asking the CEO to save it.

“I am Vijay Shekhar Sharma. This is my new WhatsApp. Please save it,” the fraudster said in the first text message sent to the CEO's social media messaging platform.

Vijay texting Vijay

The scammer tried their best to impersonate the real Paytm CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, using the CEO's picture and contact name to reach out on WhatsApp.

However, the fraudster was messaging the real CEO. Sharma played along, responding to the messages, which ended up amusing his social media followers.

After the introduction message, Sharma responded to the scammer, saying “Absolutely, Sir”, written in Hindi.

“Company ke accounts check karke batao ki company ke available funds kitne hey?” said the scammer, asking the CEO to notify him about the company's funds.

After a few interactions with the fraudster, Sharma got a text asking for details about the person who was “on duty” in the company's finance department. At this attempt, Sharma carefully redirected the scammer, exposing the poorly executed fraud attempt.

Social media reacts

Social media users and Sharma's followers found this interaction very amusing and started sharing memes about it. Some people like Deepak Shenoy even wanted a “Part 2” for the interaction with the scammer.

“Haha... I want to see part 2,” said Deepak Shenoy, the CEO of Capitalmind AMC, amused by the attempts of the scammer. 

Others like Sumit Gupta, the co-founder of crypto trading platform CoinDCX, gave full marks to the digital fraudster for their efforts to impersonate Sharma to himself. “10/10 for confidence,” he said, commenting on the CEO's social media post.

“Vijay speaking to Vijay. Madness of multiverse,” said another social media user named Adithya Thatipalli, responding to Vijay Shekhar Sharma's platform X post.

There were also many people who were stunned by the extent that the scammers go in terms of pretending to be busy in a meeting when running a scam.

“He is also pretending to be busy sitting in meetings hadh ho gayi!” said a user named Zorba.

Sudeep Srivastava, commenting to Sharma's post said, “Jokes apart, this is a serious concern many people are fooled by it.”