23/1/2018
PUNE: The
promise of lavish gifts from a glib-talking virtual friend recently cost a
55-year-old woman medical practitioner from Bhosari Rs 41.82 lakh
The online "friend" had duped the medical
practitioner with a false promise of sending foreign currency and gold
ornaments between December 13, 2017 and January 11, 2018. Though the
"gift" never reached the Pune woman, she ended up shelling out nearly
Rs 42 lakh, as purported charges and fees to get the "gift" cleared
from the Customs and RBI.
The woman said, in December 2017, she received a friend
request on her social networking account from a man identifying himself as
UK-based Mike Rodriguer. "I accepted the request as he had introduced
himself as a medical practitioner," she said. They started chatting and
shared phone numbers. "He said he would send gold ornaments and foreign
currency as a gift to me," the woman said. However, in spite of paying Rs
41.82 lakh, she failed to get the parcel Mike had supposedly sent for her. She
then lodged a complaint with the Bhosari police. An offence under Section 420
(cheating) of the IPC and other relevant sections of the Information and
Technology Act has been registered.
The complainant said
first a woman, posing to be a Delhi Airport officer, called to tell her that a
parcel had arrived from London and that she must pay charges to release it from
customs. A few days later, a man, also pretending to be an airport official,
said the parcel has been confiscated as officials found a large amount of
foreign currency in it. The victim was asked to pay some more money.
"Later, a third man, this time posing as a Reserve Bank of India officer,
asked me to transfer more money into another bank account as charges," she
said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment