Former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan scammed with Harvard offer

New Delhi : Former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan on Friday announced about being a victim of a 'phishing attack' and revealed how she fell for a fake offer to teach at Harvard University. She had resigned from the channel last year to take up the new job.

In her statements on Twitter, Razdan revealed that she was told about classes starting from September onwards but amid pandemic situation the classes got delayed till January.

She said she sensed something amiss in the delays and noted what she called "administrative anomalies" in the process described to her.

"At first, I had dismissed these anomalies as being reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic, but recently the representations being made to me were of an even more disquieting nature. As a result, I reached out to senior authorities at Harvard University for clarity. Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I believed I had received from the University," Ms Razdan said.

"After hearing from the University, I have now learnt that I have been the victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing attack. I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty as an Associate Professor of Journalism. The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts."

Nidhi Razdan has filed an official police complaint in the matter and has requested steps to identify the people behind such scam.

Razdan said she had also written to the Harvard University authorities. "I hope that the police are able to get to the bottom of this attack on me at the earliest and help me bring this unsavoury incident to a swift end," she wrote.