A 42-year-old woman ended up losing Rs 7.48 lakh in a case of cyber fraud after befriending a ‘foreigner’ on Facebook. This friend had offered sponsorship of Pound 17,000 to the victim to start her own media business and induced her to pay money to claim the sponsorship amount under various pretexts. The case is being investigated by Nhava Sheva Police in Navi Mumbai.
According to police, the complainant is a housewife living with her family in Ulwe. In January 2019, the victim had accepted a friend request from one ‘Kelly Williams’. The two then began chatting over Facebook often. “As per the victim, Williams suggested the victim should start a media business and offered to her £17,000 in sponsorship. After she agreed, she began to get calls from various people asking her to deposit money towards ‘registration charges’, ‘currency conversion charges’, ‘tax’, ‘GST charges’ and ‘upgrade charges’,” said a police officer.
He added, “Whenever she enquired with Williams why she was being asked to pay money, the latter would tell her to just pay up so that she could claim the sponsorship amount. From 2019 till date, the victim ended up paying Rs 7.48 lakh into different bank accounts to claim her sponsorship money. When the demand for money kept coming from different people, she approached the police and lodged a complaint on Monday.”
A case has been registered under sections 34 (common intention), and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (punishment for identity theft) and 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
