79-Year-Old Man Lost Rs 1.5 Crore In A Dating Scam

Older people are often more vulnerable to online frauds, hence become targets. The elderly are easy to trick and be used by fraudsters to execute their crimes.

In this case, a man from Mulund, 79 years old, became the victim in an online dating scam. And that cost him over Rs 1.5 crore after he met a woman on a European social app. An Indian Express report said that the man took his wife’s jewelry, tried to sell his house, all for that woman.

His son got suspicious about the old man’s inquiries on selling the house and flew all the way to check his phone, found the messages, from which he figured out that his dad was tricked. Knowing that, he filed a complaint to the police immediately. The 73-year-old victim told that he subscribed to a European social platform and met a Spanish woman there.

The woman made up a story that she had two children and lost her husband. After some time, they began communicating often on WhatsApp as well as other platforms.

According to the Indian Express, in June, the woman said she was sending a parcel to him, which contained expensive items such as a laptop, a mobile phone, and jewelry. The man declined to accept the parcel, so the woman told him to donate the items to local orphanages.

A few days later, a woman called the victim, saying that she was from the Customs Department. She told him that the parcel had foreign currency, so he was required to pay the duty for currency exchange. The first payment he made was Rs 50,000.

Then, that woman called him again telling him that the parcel was valuable, so the sender had to come to India.

Then another call told him that the woman was arrested because she carried lots of money in a foreign currency and charged for money laundering.

Over the past few years, similar cases have been increasing, which exploit technology and vulnerabilities of victims. In April, a 65-year-old resident from Mumbai got in a similar scam and lost all of his savings along with post-retirement funds.