That’s how social media is being used by criminals. It is well said and even well known that social media is not a safe place to be friends especially when strangers want us to become ‘friends’ with them.
Different kinds of Frauds, scams, and suspicious situations are an everyday affair for those people who make too many social media friends and get mingled with them without any verification of their identity.
In an effort to prevent the arrest of her “Facebook friend,” a 48-year-old Nandita Mohan Rao namely woman from Bengaluru ended up in a loss of Rs. 6.85 lakh. Later she realized that she had fallen prey to an organised cybercrime network, and her “friend” too was a part of it.
The victim Nandita Mohan Rao, lives in Banashankari I Stage, and she was allegedly duped into transferring Rs. 6.85 lakh to save her Facebook “friend” as he was “detained” at an airport for carrying foreign currency above the prescribed limit.
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Sources say that a couple of months ago, Nandita was befriended on Facebook by a person who claimed be named as Michael Dennis and said to be from England. After chatting on social media site “Facebook” for a while, both of them shared their respective WhatsApp numbers. The duo has had chats in which Dennis informed the woman that he was a very rich man living in England and that he was traveling to India to get a heart surgery.
On November 28, Nandita received a phone call from a person who introduced herself as a senior Customs officer at Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi, Jahnavi Sharma. She told Nandita that they had to detain Dennis because he was carrying 50,000 pounds cash that was illegal in India. Allegedly, she also informed her that `50,000 be transferred to somw particular account number to ensure that her friend was not arrested.
After ensuring the transfer of that amount, she then received another message saying she should pay Rs. 1,55,000 as conversion fee to get converted the Pounds to Rupees, and Nandita complied by again transferring that amount. Later, on the same day Nandita also received a third call from Jahnavi saying she should pay an amount of Rs. 4,80,000 as an Anti-Money Laundering which, too, Nandita transferred on November 29, 2017.
The same day a person introducing himself as Ashwini Kumar, a senior RBI officer from New Delhi asked Nandita to transfer Rs. 8,25,000 as a Commission on Turnover (COT) charge and warned her if she failed to do so, Dennis would get into jail.
After having lost all her money, Nandita got suspicious and stopped transferring money. When she tried to contact Dennis, his phone was not found reachable. At that point, she realised that she had fallen prey to an organised cyber crime network and contacted CID police on December 23 to get filed a complaint in this connection.
