Married woman cheated of Rs 17L by social media friend

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

An impostor posing as someone from England befriended a 31-year-old married woman and scammed her out of a whopping Rs 17.69 lakh. A case was registered on Thursday at the Pundliknagar Police Station regarding this incident.

The highly educated woman currently works as the superintendent of a social welfare department's Ashram Shala hostel. In August 2023, she received a friend request from an unidentified person named Williams Mikey. Upon accepting it, they started communicating and eventually exchanged mobile numbers. The fake youth from England gained the woman's trust by pretending to send her gifts. Through a video call on WhatsApp, he showed her two iPhones, gold, and diamond jewellery, and expensive shoes and asked her to pay Rs 35,000 to claim these items. The woman sent the money, but after that, the scammer began blackmailing her under various pretexts to extract more money.

Pawned gold to send more money

Once the woman started sending money, the cybercrooks began using different methods to blackmail her. Citing a police inquiry she was told to send money, therefore, the woman pawned her gold jewellery and took a loan of Rs 1.5 lakh and sent to them. She later pawned her father and sister's jewellery to take a loan of Rs 9 lakh, which she also sent. Later on, the victim was told that one of the gifts contained £50,000 in cash from England and that she needed to pay Rs 5 lakh in the form of taxes (in India) to claim it, after which they extracted another Rs 5 lakh from her.

Throughout this period, the woman kept demanding the promised gifts, but the scammers kept making excuses and avoiding her. By this point, the woman had sent them Rs 17.69 lakh. After informing her husband, she realised of being scammed. The police inspector Rajesh Yadav registered the case, and the PSI Reshim Kolekar is investigating the case.