A 65-year-old resident of Mumbai was duped of about 1.3cr in a coordinated fraud that was executed in phases over a period of 1.3 years. Getting in touch with a person named Paul Rutherford over an international dating site is when the whole situation started; the woman started her interactions with this person who claimed to be working as a civil engineer in the Philippines.
One day in April 2023, she received a call from Paul; speaking in panic, he informed her that his construction site had met with an accident, and he needed urgent money to save himself from facing regulatory actions. The women fell prey to Paul’s fake story and transferred 70 lacs to the provided wallet through Bitcoin. In June 2023, Paul told the woman that he had sent a parcel with 2 million US dollars to her address; shortly after Paul’s communication, the woman received a call from a lady named Priya Sharma, who claimed to be working with the customs department at Delhi IGI Airport. The fake customs officer told the woman to pay customs fees and other taxes to get her parcel released; the woman again fell to this tactic and, in multiple transactions, transferred about 30lacs to different account numbers over a brief period of time.
This woman was such a lucrative target for scammers that they tried their third attempt on her by posing as bank representatives from Bank of America, informing her that the bank had received the funds from the Customs department, and they would send her an ATM card for convenience. Following this, she received calls from scammers posing as individuals from RBI and IMF asking her to transfer 29 lacs as a conversion fee to facilitate the exchange of funds from US currency to Indian currency.
Finally, in June 2024, the woman realized that she had been a victim of a sophisticated series of frauds. She has lodged an FIR with the West region cyber police station with the hope of getting justice.
