Gurgaon real estate agent duped of Rs31 lakh by social media acquaintance

A 35-year-old real estate agent was allegedly duped of Rs31 lakh by a ‘woman’ he had met through a social networking site who promised him clients from foreign countries.

According to the victim, Tarun Kumar Goyal, a person named Deepika had allegedly sent him a message on social media and told him that her contacts from outside the country were looking to purchase property in the city.

Goyal said Deepika had reached out to him in March and had convinced him about the business opportunity. He had started transferring money to the suspect’s account as ‘she’ demanded a commission to introduce potential clients to him.

The victim, in his complaint to the police, said that in the last five months, he had transferred a total of Rs31,06,500 to her account.

Goyal complained to the police on Monday of fraud as he has been unable to get in touch with Deepika for the last 15 days.

A case was registered at the Udyog Vihar police station under Section 420 (cheating and dishonesty) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

“We are investigating the case. We are also taking the help of the cyber unit to trace the IP address of the suspect and also to find out more about their chat history. The accused was named Deepika but it could turn out to be a man as well,” said Anil Kumar, assistant sub-inspector, Udyog Vihar police station.

The cases of online frauds in the city have been increasing. According to the police records, 2,270 cases of cybercrime were registered in 2016 with the Cyber Crime Cell, a 15% (347) increase from 1,923 cases registered in 2015. This year, as many as 1,260 cases have been registered so far, with more than 55% of these pertaining to online banking and credit/debit card fraud.

With online banking gaining popularity, experts said that they expect instances of cybercrime to increase.