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Man duped of ₹5.3 lakh by social media ‘friend’ visiting India
Gurugram An army man was allegedly duped of ₹5.35 lakh by an unidentified person, who befriended him on a social networking site, claiming to be a foreign national
Gurugram An army man was allegedly duped of ₹5.35 lakh by an unidentified person, who befriended him on a social networking site, claiming to be a foreign national of Indian descent.
According to the cyber police, the complainant, posted as a sepoy, became friends with the suspect on Facebook in September and later started conversing on WhatsApp.
The suspect introduced herself as one Jyoti Singh, a citizen of the United Kingdom, who was interested in visiting India and buying a house in Delhi, her father’s native place, despite not having visited the city, the police said.
Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said that after chatting with each other for around two months, she told him that she was planning to visit in the last week of November. “On November 27, the victim received a message from the suspect that she was leaving London and was looking forward to meeting him. The next day, he received a call from her number that the airport officials were not allowing her to leave as she was carrying a demand draft of 200,000 UK pound(₹1.7 crore) and was detained by the customs officials,” he said.
After an hour, the victim got a call from a woman claiming to be as a customs officer at the Delhi airport, seeking payment of a legal penalty of ₹1.85 lakh for her release.
Sangwan said after the customs duty was paid, he received a call from a woman posing as an income tax official, who demanded ₹3.3 lakh. “He arranged funds through his friends and family members, and transferred the amount to the given account number. He became suspicious after he started receiving calls from other departments asking him to pay the duty for gifts she was carrying,” he said.
The police is conducting an investigation and have taken the details of bank transaction to identify the suspects.
A case of fraud was registered at Manesar police station under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC. According to police data, till December 16 this year, the city police received about 725 complaints of fraud and cheating through social media.
