A 29 year old Delhi woman used Facebook, WhatsApp to cheat men online using names like Amara Gujral, Lakshikha Choudhry, Avni Chopra, Emily Rose.
Along with everything else, fraud too has moved online. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic digitalization in India has got a sudden boost. But the same goes with online fraud too! The number of online scams have also increased. And importantly, since opportunities to meet people, especially of the opposite sex physically has become tougher due to the pandemic, social networking sites like Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal or even the dating apps, have become the most preferred way to interact. And that is exactly some unscrupulous people are taking advantage of. As per the latest case on online fraud, a 29-year-old woman was arrested in New Delhi for allegedly duping people after befriending them online.
The information was provided by police on Saturday. According to a report by PTI, the accused was arrested from Krishna Puri area of West Delhi’s Tilak Nagar at the complaint of a man named Dharam Raj, police said. Raj told police that the accused had approached him on Facebook introducing herself as Amara Gujral who lived in the UK.
What is the incident?
During their chats, the woman told Raj about her plans to come to Delhi. Then later, the man received a phone call from a woman in Mumbai who introduced herself as a custom officer. She told him that Gujral was detained at the airport with some valuable items and can only be released if she pays a fee, police said.
The police further informed that the man transferred ₹34,000 into the account number provided by the woman. However, he got the shock of his life thereafter, when he was blocked from WhatsApp and Facebook by the accused.
Acting on the complaint, police nabbed the woman who operated the Facebook profile under the name of Amara Gujral, from her rented flat, Deputy Commissioner of Police (north) Sagar Singh Kalsi said. During interrogation, the accused revealed that she began the fraud after learning about it from African neighbours in her locality, who used the same modus operandi to dupe people, the DCP said.
To execute her fraud, she bought a number of local and UK SIM cards and created several fake Facebook profiles with such names as Amara Gujral, Lakshikha Choudhry, Avni Chopra, Avantika Chopra, Anamika Gujral, and Emily Rose. Photos uploaded on these profiles were downloaded from original profiles of UK residents, police said.
She would send friend requests to Facebook users and would start talking to them on WhatsApp. In the present case, the accused had also sent pictures of valuable items and photographs of flight tickets for her arrival in India, they said.
Seeing the rising number of online frauds via Facebook and WhatsApp, people should not accept friend requests from unknown people and also not share important details with them like your financial status, address, bank details, and under no circumstances transfer money to anyone they have not met.
