Senior citizen scammed: Rs.1.30 crore lost in sophisticated cyber fraud
Senior citizen scammed: ₹1.30 crore lost in sophisticated cyber fraud.
A 65-year-old woman fell victim to a sophisticated cyber fraud, losing ₹1.30 crore to scammers posing as officials from the Customs Department, Reserve Bank of India, and International Monetary Fund. She lived in Chandivali, Powai, until June 2024 before moving to Byculla. Her ordeal began in April 2023 when she met a man on an international dating app who identified himself as Paul Rutherford, claiming to be an American civil engineer in the Philippines.
In their conversations, Rutherford fabricated a story about a serious accident at his construction site, claiming he needed money to prevent deportation to the United States. Trusting him, the woman transferred approximately ₹70 lakh in Bitcoin from April to June 2023, even borrowing from her relatives. He promised her that he would quickly repay the money.
In June, the situation changed when Rutherford informed her that he had sent a package with 2 million US dollars. Soon after, she received a call from a woman named Priya Sharma, who claimed to be from Delhi airport. Sharma told her that the package, supposedly containing the 2 million dollars, had been seized by the customs department.
Sharma told the woman that she needed to pay several fees and taxes to receive the package, guiding her to transfer money to different bank accounts. From June 2023 to March 2024, the victim followed these instructions, depositing the requested amounts into the designated accounts.
A police officer involved in the investigation remarked, “The fraud didn’t stop there.” The scammers continued their scheme by pretending to be Bank of America executives, claiming they had received the funds released by customs and had sent her an ATM card.
Later, the victim received calls from individuals impersonating Ranjana from the International Monetary Fund and Meera Bakshi from the Reserve Bank of India. They asked her for additional deposits into various bank accounts, supposedly to convert dollars into Indian currency, which they claimed amounted to ₹17 crore. Despite transferring a total of ₹1,29,43,661 to the scammers, the woman kept getting calls from supposed new authorities or agencies. As her suspicions grew, she eventually realized she had been scammed.
The victim then contacted the cyber police, and since she had previously lived in Chandivali, an FIR was filed at the West Region Cyber police station under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.
The police officer stated, “We have started the investigation but have not yet found any leads to trace the fraudsters.”
