A 22-year-old woman recently approached a man on Instagram, who claimed to be a surgeon from London and the fraudster then induced the victim to pay Rs 8.20 lakh by saying she was like his sister and he was sending her a gift for Raksha Bandhan by courier.
According to the Dahisar police, the complainant works as a sales executive in a private company. On August 01, the victim got a friend request on Instagram from an unknown person. She had accepted the friend request on August 5 after which the two started chatting. The fraudster claimed to be a surgeon in London and later they exchanged phone numbers as well.
After a few days, the fraudster addressed the complainant as his ‘sister’ in one of his messages on WhatsApp and started asking her about Raksha Bandhan. The victim explained to him that women tie Rakhi to their brothers on their wrists after which brothers give their sisters gifts. The fraudster then told her he wants to send her gifts as well but the complainant refused to accept any.
On August 14, the accused told the victim that he has already sent gifts to her and they will reach India on August 15. He said she will have to pay Rs 20,000 as custom clearance charges. The victim later received a WhatsApp message informing that her gift parcel had landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi asking her to pay Rs 20,000 to claim the parcel.
Since then, the fraudsters induced the victim to send Rs 8.20 lakh over a period of time till September 02 on various pretexts to claim the gift parcel containing ‘cash’. The woman had been paying into the bank accounts given by the fraudsters.
When the demand for money kept continuing, the victim confided in her brother and narrated the entire incident after which her brother took her to the police station and got a complaint lodged with the police on Saturday. The police have registered a case on charges of cheating, cheating by personation, cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, identity theft and cheating by personation by using computer resource.
Mumbai: Youth loses Rs 1.41L to cyber-fraudster offering ‘buy one, get one free’ iPhone offer
