Woman duped by man she met on matrimonial website

A 27-year-old finance professional in Mumbai was allegedly duped of ?12.5 lakh by a man she met on a matrimonial website. The man claimed to be a wealthy businessman and convinced her to transfer money to various bank accounts. The police have registered a case against him.

MUMBAI: A 27-year-old finance professional with a multinational building material supplier based in Navi Mumbai’s Airoli was allegedly duped to the tune of ₹12.50 lakh by a man, who got in touch with her on a matrimonial website.

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According to the police, the complainant, a resident of Karve Nagar, Kanjurmarg, had created a profile on a matrimonial website a year ago.

In April this year, she received a message on her social media account from a person who told her that he had seen her profile on the matrimonial site. The man told the woman that he had closed his profile on the matrimonial site and that’s why he chose to message her through social media.

“The man told her that he had seen her pictures and liked her. He told her that his father had died in 2016 and mother in 2019, after that he was handling his father’s business of petroleum products and spinning mills in Bengaluru,” a police officer said. They started chatting and speaking on video calls in Telugu and English.

“To gain her confidence and flaunt how rich he was, the man even sent her bank statements and business details. On gaining her confidence, he asked the woman to order a machine on her credit card. When she told him she did not have a credit card, he told her his business bank accounts were frozen and he required money urgently,” the police officer said.

The fraud then asked her to transfer money to various bank accounts under various pretexts and thus took ₹9.80 lakh from her. “He even asked her to take personal loans which the complainant refused to do, after which he took details of her two credit cards and even OTPs and withdrew ₹2.70 lakh using the cards,” the police said.

When the woman asked him to refund the amount that she had sent him and he had withdrawn using her credit cards, he did not. “He then deleted the bank account details sent by him to her and thus duped her of a total of ₹12.50 lakh,” the police added.

The woman searched the name of the businesses given by the fraud, she found all of them were owned by somebody else. The woman then approached the Kanjurmarg police.

“We have registered a case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code,” the police said.