Man swindles woman out of over Rs0.5mn after meeting online

NEW DELHI: A man impersonating ‘German national’ swindles a woman out of Rs0.515 million after meeting her on a social networking website.

According to media reports, the suspect had contacted the woman, who is an IT engineer, for the first time in January 2019.  Soon they become close friends and started telephonic conversation.

Police said that the man had offered a marriage proposal to the woman, a resident of Nagpur, India,   which she had accepted.

Meanwhile, the suspect informed her that he was sending her a gift from Germany.

In March 2019, the woman received a call from a man, who pretended himself as a customs officer in Delhi and asked her to pay Rs30,000 as customs duty to get the package released.

After transferring the amount to the bank account, the man mentioned, the woman received another telephone call from the so-called customs officer and he demanded her to pay Rs4.85 lakh more if she wanted to receive the parcel.

The woman, who fell in love with the suspect, managed to borrow the amount from two of her friends and transferred it to the account.

When she did not receive any intimation about the gift and her boyfriend also disappeared, the woman realized that she had been cheated.

After a couple of days, when the woman’s friends started asking her to pay the money, she approached the police and lodged a case against the suspect.