Mumbai: Woman meets conman on dating app, ends up losing Rs 39k in gift fraud

A 46-year-old woman from Vile Parle had come across a person on a dating app. The said person claimed to be from Madrid in Spain. The duo then began chatting with each other. In one of the conversations, the fraudster told the victim that he would meet her only after she accepts his gifts. The fraudster, then on the pretext of sending gifts, induced the victim to pay the money. Juhu police are probing the case.

According to the Juhu police, the complainant had registered on a dating app and on October 01, the victim had come across the profile of a person on the said dating app and she had liked the said profile. After the profile got matched, on October 04, the said person asked the victim for her WhatsApp number. The two then began chatting on WhatsApp.

The said person during their conversations had told the victim that he is from Madrid in Spain. The said person then told the victim that he wanted to meet her and asked the victim to visit Dubai to meet him. The victim refused to meet him in Dubai and instead asked the person to meet her in Mumbai. The fraudster then told the victim that he would meet her only if she accepts the gift sent by him, police said.

On October 10, the accused told the victim that he had sent a gift parcel for him. Two days later, a woman called the victim claiming to be from Delhi airport. The woman then told the victim that she would have to pay Rs 39,999 delivery charges to claim the gift and also provided a bank account number in which the money was supposed to be deposited.

The fraudsters then told the victim that she would have to pay Rs 1,99,999 more for the anti-money laundering certificate since the gift contained foreign currency and gold. The victim, however, refused to pay the said money after which the fraudster she had met on the dating app blocked her contact. Having realised that she had been duped, the victim lodged a police complaint on Sunday.

The police have registered a case under sections 419 (cheating by personation) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and section 66C (identity theft) of the Information Technology Act.