Greed for $40K makes Jamanagar man lose Rs 14L to frauds

Rajkot: His greed to get a US $ 40,000 gift from a “lady friend” cost a Jamanagar man dear.
After losing more than Rs 14 lakh to cyber frauds, 30-year-old Aashish Sakariya, a corporate employee, approached Meghpar police station in Jamnagar on Tuesday to register his complaint under various sections of IPC and Information Technology Act.
In his complaint, Sakariya said he was befriended by a ‘London-based’ woman on Instagram in February, who identified herself as Sofia Vergara. However, Sakariya didn’t realize that he was being duped in the name of a Colombian American actress and started chatting. They later shifted conversation to WhatsApp and also exchanged each other’s pictures.
According to the complainant, after developing cordial relations the woman sent him a message saying that she has couriered him a gift of US$ 40000 and asked him to pay Rs35,000 to release the parcel. Sakariya thereafter got a call from ‘customs’ office asking him to pay Rs 35,000 in the account of one Dinesh Sharma to clear the parcel. He deposited the amount as instructed.
Thereafter he got another call from a person posing as a customs officer who asked him to pay Rs 1.2 lakh as the scanning machine showed the parcel to be contain more than $40,000. Thereafter he got a call that his parcel had been cleared by customs, but he still needs to pay tax of Rs 2.45 lakh as per government of India norms.
The caller also promised to provide him a receipt from the Income tax. After he paid, Sakariya also received a receipt on his WhatsApp but soon after he got another message asking him to pay Rs 5.25 lakh more to clear the parcel, which he followed on the insistence of Sofia.
But he again got a stop order of parcel delivery on his WhatsApp as it said he still needs to get an authorized certificate of Delhi high court by paying Rs 10.36 lakh to release the American money.
Sakariya deposited Rs 5 lakh this time and refused to follow Sofia’s instruction and instead asked her to come to India. So far, he had deposited a total of Rs 14.45 lakh in one and half months in six different accounts in public sector and private sector banks before he realized that he was being cheated.
The FIR is registered under IPC section 419, 420, 120, 120B and IT Act and police has started investigation.
Police sub inspector of Meghpar police station, D S Vadher said, “He was reluctant to register an FIR because even while being an educated person he got trapped in fraud. It took us a week to convince him to register an FIR. It’s a matter of investigation that what was the influence of the accused that the complainant deposited this huge amount.”