Pune, October 7: In another incident of online fraud, a 59-year-old real estate agent from Pune duped of Rs 47 lakh. Acording to a report published in Hindustan Times, the police have booked an American national for cheating the real estate agent. As per the police, the accused Antheshia Smith, initially befriended the victim on Facebook and interacted with him for a few days. The accused showed her interested in investing in the real estate sector in Pune. The victim in his complaint mentioned that after chatting with each other for around 4-5 months, Smith came to the Delhi airport with gold and was caught by the customs officials.

According to the report, the victim got a call from a woman identifying herself as a 'customs officer' from the Delhi airport. She said that the police had detained his friend Smith with gold and asked the victim to pay Rs 2.5 lakh in total for the release of Smith. The 59-year-old man got repeated calls demanding money. In total, the victim made 37 online transactions with a new bank account being mentioned each time and around Rs 47 lakh was transferred within a period of one and a half months to release his friend Smith. Cyber Crime! Fake SMS asking to Click on paytermredeem.com Leads Gurugram Business Woman To Lose Rs. 76,000

The police have registered a case under Section 420 (cheating), Section of 419 (punishment for cheating by personation) of the Indian penal code (IPC) and Section 66 C,D of the Information Technology Act 2000 against the fraudster and efforts are being made to track the details of the bank accounts in which money was transferred.

In a similar incident in July, a retired banker was cheated of Rs Rs 35 lakh by a woman, whom he befriended on Facebook. The woman introduced herself as Jenny Anderson from London and claimed to have owned a jewellery shop. In a bid to rescue her from immigration officials at Mumbai airport, the man not only gave away Rs 13 lakh of his savings but also took a loan of Rs 22 lakh from private lenders. However, he later realised that his Facebook girlfriend conned him.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 07, 2018 05:24 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).