Gurugram woman duped of ₹30L by social media ‘friend’

GURUGRAM: A friendship on a social networking website cost a woman over ₹30 lakh.

The police said on Wednesday that the woman, who hailed from Shimla, had befriended a man on Facebook last year and was allegedly duped by him after he offered to send her a gift and settle in her home town for business.

However, by the time police completed the investigation and filed an FIR on Tuesday, the woman had died in an accident.

Police said the woman received a friend request on Facebook from a man sometime in August last year. He wrote to her saying that he wanted to ‘settle in Shimla and was trying to reach out to old friends’, police said.

A police officer privy to the investigation, said, “After two months of chatting on the social networking website, the man told her he was sending her gold and a gift pack, which would arrive at Delhi international airport in a week’s time. He even offered to make her a partner in a business venture in Shimla,” the official said.

According to the complainant’s statement in the FIR, she received calls from people posing as officials of the airport authority, asking her to pay a ‘tax’ to claim the ‘courier’ that had arrived at the Delhi airport.

On October 5 last year, she deposited ₹42,000 in a bank account provided by her Facebook friend and ₹80,000 through a cheque in another bank account as ‘courier fees’, police said.