Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Apr 27: It is gathered that cheating by falsely claiming in matrimonial sites to have been employed in a foreign country has been increasing every year. About 200 ladies, lured by the evil designs of the miscreants, have lost over five crore rupees during the last three years, a report says.

As per a reported published in a Kannada daily, there is a fixed plan of action the fraudsters follow. They normally choose candidates who are either single, divorced, or specially abled ladies as their victims. They introduce themselves to the ladies, win over their confidence, and then play their tricks meant to siphon off their savings. The women normally are enticed by the assurance of gifts, marriage and high standard of life in foreign country.

For example, a lady who got herself registered in a matrimony website recently, got to know of a man who claimed himself to be NRI settled in England working as doctor. He also gave her the date of his visit to India during one of the chats. On the day of his promised arrival, the lady got a call from a person who introduced himself as an airport customs officer. The officer told her that a gift had been sent to her in violation of customs rules and that for releasing the gift, fine has to be remitted. The lady believed in what he said, and remitted Rs 4.5 lac to the account number given by him. Since then, neither the self-claimed customs officer, nor the NRI groom is available for contact, the lady rues.

The lady had started working as beautician after her face was distorted in a recent accident. Earlier, she was working in the sales department of a firm. As she had to look after her aged mother, she wanted to get married. She says that the person who got in touch with her claimed his name as Benjamin with British citizenship, and settled in Liverpool. All of these, it transpires, were lies.

The lady had remitted money as demanded by the 'customs officer' to the account mentioned by him in four installments. Police personnel of cyber crime department in the city, who are investigating the case, have found that the amount so deposited was credited to an account maintained in a bank branch in Jharkhand state. The police recall that a 43-year-old woman had lost Rs 24 lac in a fraud of similar nature last year. In that incident, the caller had made the woman to remit the money in 11 installments after promising to arrive at the airport here with a costly gift.

The police say they have received six complaints about matrimony website frauds between March 25 and April 12. In most of these cases, women were targetted. Most of the telephones used by the fraudsters were found to have been located in New Delhi, Noida etc. This was found by looking at the internet protocol. The callers made their victims to believe that these calls were made from foreign countries. Some of the bank accounts involved were situated in states like Meghalaya, Mizoram and Manipur, where money was withdrawn or transferred elsewhere immediately after credit was received. Therefore, the police too have become helpless, sources say.