Beware! Next time you receive a friendship request from any unknown foreigner on Facebook, you should accept it only after completely checking the person’s antecedents. If you accept the request without knowing much about the person, chances are that you may be duped of your money like several women have been in the recent past in the national Capital. Police are busy investigating cases where women have been duped by their foreign FB friends.
One such case is of a senior Delhi Government officer who had accepted a similar request from a person, who had introduced himself as a foreigner (an American citizen) about a year ago. The unmarried officer used to regularly chat with her so called American friend. A couple of months ago her friend sent a message that he was visiting India. As the officer was eagerly awaiting to meet her friend in Delhi, he told her that he was stuck at some other airport as he had misplaced his money. On the request of her American FB friend, she transferred some money into his account.
The officer got another request from him for more money so that he could get his goods cleared from the Customs Department. In all, the officer ended up transferring about Rs18 lakh into the account of her American friend. To her utter surprise, she later discovered that her friend had opened a fake FB account.
It took a few months for her to absorb the shock before she sought help from senior officials in the Delhi Government who forwarded it to police. The matter was brought before the Home Department which has transferred the matter to the Delhi Police.
According to officials, the woman is 55 years old and her friend claimed himself to be 70 years old, deeply in love with India and Hindu mythology.
like this unmarried woman, another similar complaint of Rs14 lakh being swindled from a married woman — related to a Delhi Government official — by a Facebook friend has been brought to their notice. She too had made a foreigner her new FB friend. One day her friend told her that he had got her a necklace worth Rs1 crore and he needed money to get it cleared from the customs department. The woman is said to have transferred about Rs14 lakh to her friend’s account. later, she too discovered that she had been duped. She too approached the Home Department to take up the matter with the city police. She is in shock as she can’t narrate this tragedy to her husband. The officials said in both these cases, the complainant was befriended over six months and made to deposit huge money in an account by luring them with expensive jewellery item.
like these two employees, another married woman was told by her FB friend to deposit money into the account of a particular company so that he could get her gifts cleared from the customs wing. He told her that she should show the company’s receipt to the customs officers to get her gifts. But to her utter dismay, the customs officers told her that no such company existed in the country.
Preliminary investigations showed that some people had been duping Indian woman on the pretext that they were either from the United States and other European countries. “Once they dupe any woman, they immediately change their FB account,” a police officer said.