A 26-year-old woman, working for an automobile company in Punjab, was duped of around Rs 7 lakh by a 27-year-old foreign national who befriended her on a social networking.

Police have arrested a man from Ivory Coast in connection with the crime. His preliminary interrogation revealed that he was part of an organised syndicate of cyber cheats.

The cyber cell of Delhi Police’s special cell is probing this gang and a case on the basis of the woman’s complaint has been registered on Saturday.

“We have some leads about this gang,” said MM Oberoi, special commissioner of police (special cell). According to the woman, she received a friend request on the social networking site in July. The man identified himself as John Harry, a citizen of Scotland working as a manager with a multi-national company. They became friends and started talking to each other through messages and internet calls.

“To win my trust, he used to send me photos of a person with iconic locations of Scotland in the backdrop. In August, he told me about a gift he had sent for me and also gave the courier’s tracking code. He tricked me into depositing Rs 1.85 lakh. However, the gift was never delivered,” the woman said.

When the woman told him about the delay in receiving the gift, he told her that he would visit Delhi to meet her and personally deliver the gift. On October 10, the complainant said, a woman claiming to be an immigration officer called her to inform that John Harry was caught at the Mumbai Airport with £50,000. The woman asked her to pay Rs 2.10 lakh to exchange the foreign currency into Indian banknotes.

“I deposited the amount in three bank accounts after which the man called me again and tricked me in depositing Rs 2.50 lakh more by saying he had reached IGI airport but the immigration officials were not releasing him,” the woman added. The man later never came to meet the woman and instead told her that he was being sent back to his country by the Indian authorities. The woman found herself cheated when the a police team approached her and informed her that she was being duped .

First Published: Dec 17, 2018 13:24 IST