Mumbai: Posing as girl online, man cheats victim twice for nearly Rs 25 lakh

The Central Region Cyber police have arrested a 33-year-old Jharkhand native who allegedly cheated the same victim using the same modus operandi not once but twice over the last year.

According to police officials, the victim is a 31-year-old man who stays in Mumbai with his family.

The police said that last year, the victim received a Facebook friend request from a profile which was created in the name of a girl. They started chatting and the friendship soon progressed into a romantic relationship. The profile, however, was actually being operated by the accused, who was later identified as Saeed Ahmed, 33.

“As the supposed relationship progressed, Ahmed, under various pretexts, the accused convinced the victim to transfer around Rs 7 lakh to his account in varying instalments,” said senior police inspector Rajesh Nagawade, Central Region Cyber police station.

The victim realised that he was being taken for a ride and broke off all contact with the “girl”. A couple of months later, he received another friend request, this time from another girl.

The victim was cautious at first but the “girl” kept sending him messages persistently. The profile, too, was more detailed than the previous one and slowly, the victim started responding to the messages. They started chatting regularly, during which the victim poured his heart out to his new “female friend”, telling her about how he had been taken for a ride by a "girl" recently.

Ahmed, posing as the new girl, promised him that she would never break his heart and went on to promise to marry him. This time, he regularly sent pictures of the same girl in whose name he had created the bogus account to keep the victim hooked. However, as the months passed, Ahmed spun new stories about facing financial difficulties and started asking for money. Every time, Ahmed, posing as the girl, promised the victim that “she” would soon come to Mumbai so that they could get married.

Over a span of several weeks, Ahmed took a total of Rs 24.67 lakh from the victim before he finally got suspicious and told his family about it. The family then approached the police station and a complaint was registered in this regard in May this year.

“We conducted technical investigations into the matter and traced Ahmed to Jharkhand, from where he was arrested. He has been remanded in police custody till Monday and we are digging deeper into his antecedents,” Nagawade said.