American ‘nurse in distress’ dupes Sirsa man of Rs 40K
Sirsa, June 26
Two separate incidents of cyber fraud have recently come to light here, highlighting the vulnerability of residents to online scams.
Rajkumar, a resident of Panihari village, was defrauded of Rs 40,500 by someone posing as American nurse named Mary Smith on Facebook. Claiming to be stuck at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport without Indian currency, the perpetrator persuaded Rajkumar to send money to him/her multiple times through online transfers.
Once the money was transferred, Rajkumar was blocked on WhatsApp. He promptly reported the incident to the Cyber Police Station, resulting in the filing of an FIR under Section 420 of the IPC.
In the second case, Aman Giri, a resident of Ram Colony, was enticed by a scammer promising lucrative returns through stock market investments.
He encountered an advertisement on Facebook about investment opportunities. Intrigued, he clicked on the advertisement and was added to a WhatsApp group named “GFSL Securities Official Stock B9,” where discussions about IPO trading were ongoing. The group admin, using three WhatsApp numbers, convinced Aman to download the GFSL app, through which he monitored his investments. Transferring Rs 5,000 from his bank account initially, Aman was eventually duped into transferring a total of Rs 11.43 lakh from various accounts. When he tried to withdraw his supposed profits, he discovered that his GFSL account was frozen and was asked to deposit an additional Rs 3 lakh to unfreeze it.
Realising he had been scammed, Aman filed a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. An FIR has been lodged under Section 420 of the IPC against the unidentified perpetrator.
Investigations are ongoing in both cases to apprehend the culprits and prevent such fraudulent activities from ocurring in the future.
