Modern Love: The Ones who got away

CHENNAI: Emotional manipulation is a cottage industry where swindlers play an elaborate con on the victims after acquainting with them through social media and matrimony websites.

The con can last a few days to months until the victims realise that they’re being swindled and question their ‘lover’ only to find they were blindsided. Most of these conmen get away as the victims feel ashamed to approach the police.

A Chennai court recently sentenced two Nigerian nationals to five years in prison for cheating a city-based woman of Rs 4.5 lakh. He had claimed to be a doctor from the Netherlands. They had met through a matrimonial website.

The city police found 6 more cases of women who were financially conned and made them depose before the court. But they could not provide enough evidence to link them to the Nigerians.

Nonetheless, here are those conmen and their notorious avatars they used to swindle thousands of rupees from their victims.

Good Doctor

Johanan Davila managed to scam over Rs 9 lakh from a widow in Pallavaram. It began when she accepted a friend request on Facebook.

They became Facebook friends towards the end of May 2021 and within two days, they were discussing marriage. Johanan told the victim that he’d be visiting India in September 2021 with his 6-year-old child to make their relationship official and also got the residential address of the victim.

A week after the victim accepted the Facebook request and hardly two days after discussing marriage, she received a call from the ‘Office of International Courier Service’ that Dr Johanan Davila had sent a parcel from the UK and she had to immediately pay Rs 45,000 to receive it.

After the first transaction, she received another call stating that on scanning the parcel, they found currency in it and asked the woman to pay Rs 50,000. The next day, she received another call.

This time, she was told that the parcel contained gold items and that she was liable to be prosecuted under the Money Laundering Act. They asked her to shell out Rs 1.17 lakh to not take any legal action. The victim did as she was told.

A week later, she was subjected to further con as a man from the ‘courier agency’ told her that there were US dollars in the parcel and asked her to pay Rs 3 lakh for a release certificate.

“I was sceptical and questioned them after which they sent photographs and the video of the parcel. When I asked John about it, he told me that there was gold jewellery in the parcel and forced me to pay the money,” the victim deposed in court.

This time, the victim pledged her jewellery and sent Rs 3 lakh. It did not stop there. She was threatened with police arrest and a visit from the vigilance officials. Terrified, she ended up sending about Rs 4 lakh in two transactions.

Totally, the victim had sent about Rs 9 lakh within two weeks of accepting a friend request on Facebook. She began being doubtful when the scamsters demanded Rs 11 lakh.

Insta Scammer

Claiming to be a doctor, the scammer got in touch with the victim through Instagram. Believing that she was talking with Dr Eden Ezekiel, she exchanged phone numbers and started chatting on WhatsApp from April 2021.

Things escalated quickly and the woman and the yet-to-be-identified Casanova were discussing marriage. Exactly a month after their WhatsApp chats, she got a phone call from a woman who claimed to be calling from the Delhi Airport. The victim was told that she had been sent a gift from abroad and had to pay Rs 28,000 to receive it.

She, of course, discussed it with her ‘fiancé’ who promptly asked her to do an online transaction.

The next day, she was manipulated into shelling out Rs 95,000 and then Rs 1.5 lakh. Only when a demand of Rs 2.5 lakh was made, did it occur to her that she was being conned and did not make the last transaction.

When she disclosed her doubts to her ‘fiancé’, he threatened her, which she filed a police complaint.

Smooth Criminal

The victim in this case is a techie with a leading IT firm who also has a flourishing bridal make-up business, which she markets through her Instagram page.

The man, claiming to be from the UK, started talking to her in mid-April 2021 by way of making business enquiries. He would often exchange pleasantries, forwarding memes and reels and eventually started conversing in WhatsApp.

The conman then told the victim that his birthday is due and that he’d like to send gifts to all his friends. Though she wasn’t convinced initially, she gave in and shared her residential address with the fraudster. Then the routine followed.

A woman claiming to call from Mumbai airport asked the victim to pay Rs 30,000 to receive the parcel and then stated that the parcel contained UK currency, for which Rs 95,000 duty and Rs 1.5 lakh conversion charges had to be paid.

According to her deposition before the court, she paid the ‘requested’ money and even after sending Rs 3 lakh, she was asked to pay upgrade charges of Rs 1.5 lakh, which she ended up paying in three transactions of Rs 50,000.

“Even after this, I was asked for more money and I asked my friends if they could lend money. When they learned about my ordeal, they expressed doubts. I stopped paying,” she deposed in court.

When she confronted the UK man about this, he again told her to transfer the money online, after which she filed a police complaint

‘America’ maapillai

The victim, a teacher at a private school, fell prey to a man claiming to be an ‘America’ maapillai with a flourishing career as an interior designer in Dubai.

Identifying himself as Mahesh Sharma, he contacted the victim through the matrimonial website Jeevansathi.com, according to her deposition. The phone call she received had the ISD code, which made her believe that she was actually receiving a call from a foreign nation, but police say that such things can be easily faked.

In this instance, she had hopes of marrying and settling abroad. Imagine her shock when ‘Mahesh’ called and said that he had been detained by the Customs officials at Delhi airport. To hassle her even more, she was sent two documents reading Indian Customs Services and Republic of India Office of Terrorism and Finance Crime through WhatsApp.

The victim initially paid Rs 63,000 and then received a call from the ‘Customs’ officer who claimed that Mahesh is now under custody of Delhi Police. Between September 2020 and February 2021, she ended up paying Rs 4.1 lakh. Upon his ‘release from custody’, Mahesh began evading her queries and one fine day, blocked her. The victim told the court that she had not made any video calls with the suspect.

She filed an online complaint first and then a petition with the Cyber Crime police.

GOAN GIFTS

The idea of an engineer working in the UK with heritage property in Goa showing interest in marrying you might have been hard to ignore especially when it happens through a matrimonial website, but a divorcee fell into the trap and ended up shelling out more than Rs 4 lakh.

“I had registered on a Christian matrimony website and had received a request from a profile in March 2021. I liked what I had read in his profile,” the victim deposed in court.

The man who went by the name of John Vijay claimed that his wife had deserted him and planned to live his next phase of life in Goa, where his family has ancestral property. “He claimed to be an engineer and had chats over WhatsApp. He was convincing and I did not doubt anything then,” the victim had said in her deposition.

After gaining her confidence, John got her address stating that he was sending a gift for her and daughter. An email with a courier slip was sent to the victim on April 6, 2021 — just a week after she started talking to him.

The routine of ‘call from the airport’ followed and the victim in this case lost Rs 2.5 lakh to scammers. “A woman claiming to call from the Delhi airport called me again and asked me to send my bank account details. That’s when I realised something was amiss and enquired with my auditor, who confirmed my suspicions,” she explained.

MARINE TRAP

The conman claimed to be a marine engineer from Birmingham and got in touch with the victim, a 22-year-old, on Instagram in July 2021. Fresh out of college and new at work, she ended up paying Rs 11 lakh, falling to the gift trap.

According to her first complaint with the MGR Nagar police station, the conman, who called himself Bernard Alessio, sent a video of the gift parcel he had supposedly sent her.

“He told me that he had bought some gifts for me, and as a friend I have to accept it. He sent the courier tracking link and number. A video from the gift box showed handbags, iPhone 11 Pro Max, watches and other valuable jewellery,” stated an FIR registered in MGR Nagar police station.

She ended up paying Rs 11.6 lakh, of which Rs 10.8 lakh was from her mother’s bank account. She was put through the same routine of a call from the Delhi airport and the caller demanding ‘Customs duty’ for the parcel she received. “After shelling out several lakhs, I told Bernard that I had no money. He emotionally blackmailed me saying that he had bought the gold and diamond jewellery sets for me and asked me to send the money,” she deposed in court.

Capturing scamsters, city cops show how it’s done

CHENNAI: The two Nigerians – Paulinus Chiliko and Cletus Ikechukwu – who are serving time in Puzhal prison were convicted in April this year, thanks to effective police work by the city’s Cyber Crime wing.

In July 2021, a single mother from Perambur approached the City Police after she lost money to scamsters. She had registered on a matrimonial website and received interest from a ‘doctor from Netherlands’ who went by the name of Mohammed Salim.

He told the victim that he had sent a gift parcel worth lakhs of rupees, and that to claim the gift, he asked her to pay money to various bank accounts for registration and conversion charges, according to the police.

The whole charade of calls from ‘customs official’ and ‘parcel agents’ followed, and the victim even faced emotional manipulation (threat of suicide by scamsters) when she refused to pay. After shelling out lakhs in several instalments, on July 17, 2021, she again received a call from a lady from an Indian number that Dr Salim had arrived in Delhi airport and that he did not have a PIO (Person of Indian Origin) card to enter into India or Tamil Nadu. She was told that he needed to pay Rs1.35 lakh to get the card immediately, else he’d have to stay in the airport custody for 14 days.

“The victim’s health was affected because of mental torture,” police said.

After she paid Rs 4.5 lakh, the victim filed a complaint with Chennai Police Commissioner after which a special team headed by Inspector Vinoth Kumar swung into action.

While collecting the necessary details from the banks to which the victim transferred money, the team also found that the fraudsters misused the Muslim matrimony website by creating a fake profile misusing someone else’s photos to impersonate a doctor from the Netherlands. Investigation revealed that the mobile numbers used by fraudsters were obtained by misusing some innocent person’s ID proof.

While the address details obtained from mobile service providers were found to be fake, the location was traced to Uttam Nagar, New Delhi. The ATM transactions too were found to be in Uttam Nagar after which the special team camped in New Delhi.

“With the help of banks, we got CCTV images of the suspects withdrawing money from ATMs in Uttam Nagar, minutes after the victim transferred money. Using that and pinhole camera clipping, we identified that it was a Nigerian national, based on the physical features,” said a police officer.

Paulinus and Cletus were picked up from their apartment, where police found several fake Facebook profiles and matrimony accounts in their laptop. They were brought to the city in September 2021 and have been serving time in Puzhal jail since.

After perusing the evidence produced by the Cyber Crime wing, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate N Kothandaraj sentenced both to five years in jail.

Preying on the folly of youth

CHENNAI: While it can be argued that the victims – mostly youngsters – of such elaborate cons could have shown a lot more restraint while sending money to strangers they had met online, it’s worth pointing out that in the case of matrimonial sites, they were operating on faith that they were talking to a real person.

“We’ve issued an advisory to matrimony sites to be more careful and conduct background checks especially in case of foreign citizens wanting to marry Indians. But, the onus lies on the individual to be judicious about giving money to people they barely know,” a police officer said.

Police claim that most victims who are cheated through matrimonial sites are divorcees. “From our investigations, we’ve found that this kind of scam is entirely operated by Nigerian nationals,” a senior cop said. “It’s spread across the country. In many cases, victims don’t file complaints, which gives scamsters a long rope.”

It’s not that all cons are orchestrated by groups. There are individual cases too.

In August, last year, the Adyar police arrested Dinesh Karthik, a BCom graduate who posed as a doctor and siphoned off Rs 12 lakh from a woman doctor. They had met through ‘Elite matrimony’, according to the police.

An officer pointed out that it was natural for the woman to believe that she was talking to a genuine person as the minimum subscription fee for Elite Matrimony is Rs 1 lakh.

A policeman said that after arresting the Nigerian nationals in 2021, the number of complaints have reduced. “Victims feel an overwhelming sense of shame in these cases which prevents them from filing a police complaint,” added the official.