Gzb resident duped of ₹30L in online fraud

NOIDA: A man has allegedly lost about ₹30 lakh over three months to an ‘American’ woman who befriended him online and cheated him with two other gang members on the pretext of customs clearance for a parcel. A case was registered at Noida’s Cyber police station on Wednesday.

The complainant, Sarfaraz Nawaz Saifi, who runs an AC repair shop, is a resident of Masoori in Ghaziabad. In the complaint, he said that on January 17 last year, he received a friend request from a woman named Satlora Pace. “I accepted her request without suspecting a foul play. Pace introduced herself as an officer in US Army presently posted in Afghanistan,” he said.

The two persons started talking to each other using messenger app and through emails, police said.

Saifi said that one day Pace informed that she had a bag having US $1.5 million and she can’t carry all the money to the US due to legal complications. “Pace said that if she carried the money to the US, the customs department will quiz her and she may lose her job. She said that she would send the money to me,” he said.

Pace had shared a bank account number and asked Saifi to pay ₹77,000 as customs clearance fee. “I believed the woman and made the payment. Soon, I received a call from another woman Mona Singh, who identified herself as a customs officer and asked me to deposit ₹1.98 lakh in a bank account to clear the parcel,” he said.

The victim discussed the issue with Pace and finally made this payment too, the police said. The complainant said that he then got another call from a person named Krish William, who also identified himself as a customs official, and asked him to get a tax clearance certificate by paying ₹4.95 lakh.

Saifi said that he again paid the money. However, the gang members continued calling him and demanding money for different clearances. The complainant said that he lost ₹29.97 lakh in this online fraud to the gang.

Recently, Saifi filed a complaint at a local police station, which forwarded it to Noida’s Cyber police station, as it specialises in the investigation of cyber crimes.

Triveni Singh, superintendent of police (cyber crime), said that a case has been registered against three suspects under sections 420 (cheating) and 406 (criminal breach of trust) of IPC and Section 66 of IT Act. “We are investigating the case. The suspects would be arrested soon,” he said.

THE VICTIM HAD BEFRIENDED THE ‘AMERICAN’ WOMAN ONLINE