Mumbai: A 43-year-old woman from Mumbai was duped of a significant sum of money reportedly in an online dating scam. According to police, the woman, an art director by profession, met a man named “Advait” on Tinder, an online dating application, last month. The alleged scammer, who said that he was based outside India, told the woman that he intended to visit Mumbai to meet her. The same day, the woman received a call from a man claiming to be a Delhi Customs official, who said “Advait” was detained at the airport and that she will have to ‘pay’ Rs 3.37 lakh to ‘free’ him.
The woman, who claimed to be in a “budding relationship” with “Advait”, was told by the ‘customs official’ that his partner was detained with a large sum of Euros and that she needed to pay Rs 3.37 lakh via Unified Payment Interface (UPI) to secure his release, according to a Times of India report.
Upon hearing the news, the woman panicked and then followed the caller's instructions and transferred the money. The scammer later demanded an additional Rs 4.99 lakh for “further expenses”. The woman, while making the second transaction, got a scam alert after which she suspected a fraud in the whole scenario.
How vigilant call saved Mumbai woman
The report added that while she attempted to transfer the second amount, a ‘vigilant bank’ official noticed something was wrong. The staff member questioned the woman about the transaction and immediately alerted her about the entire being a potential scam. The police have registered a case of cheating at Mumbai’s Versova police station against unidentified individuals, and investigations are ongoing, the report added.
In another incident, a 33-year-old woman from Malad fell victim to a similar scam. She was dupoed of Rs 2.45 lakh by a man who claimed to be a doctor visiting from the UK. She was defrauded the customs issue.