A conman, who claimed to be a paediatrician hailing from Mangaluru and working in the United Kingdom cheated a 33-year-old hospital admin executive in Bengaluru of around Rs 2 lakh after promising to marry her.
Deepika (name changed) was surprised when Dr Stanislaus Lobo, a doctor from the UK, expressed interest in her profile on the matrimonial site. The two exchanged telephone numbers and began talking.
Lobo told Deepika that his parents were doctors and hailed from Mangaluru. Having lost both at a young age, he was raised by an uncle and aunt. He also claimed that he wanted to marry an Indian on account of his Mangaluru connections. Deepika believed she met the right man and shared details about her family, too.
Lobo got intimate and told Deepika he was coming to India soon to fix their wedding. Before that, he said he would send her a packet of pen drives, containing his family album and pictures of his childhood, along with a few gifts.
The Gift!
In the last week of December, Lobo told Deepika that a packet has been despatched, containing vanity bags, designer perfumes, diamond-studded watches and an iPhone, besides the pen drives. He sent her pictures of these items on WhatsApp, saying it would be delivered before their wedding on January 7.
Two days later, a woman claiming to be an employee of Trustway Couriers called Deepika and asked her to pay Rs 36,000 as goods tax for the gifts sent to her. When she informed Lobo about it, he said the packet also contained 10,000 pounds, which he sent so that the extra expenses would not burden Deepika or her family.
She then transferred the tax amount to the bank account sent by the woman from Trustway Couriers.
A few days later, Lobo sent a screenshot of the online booking confirmation of a Bengaluru hotel for his stay from January 15 to February 1. "I even called up the Novotel Hotel in Marathahalli to check if a doctor from London had made a booking, and they confirmed it," Deepika said.
The same woman from the courier company called Deepika a second time with a request to transfer Rs 61,000 as insurance money for the 10,000 pounds in the packet. Deepika did as she was told since she already knew from Lobo that the packet contained the money.
Deepika received a third call from the woman, asking her to pay Rs 86,000 as tax for foreign exchange conversion. When Deepika called Lobo, he told her to pay the "small" amount as she would have nearly Rs 9 lakh after the conversion.
Deepika grew suspicious when the courier woman and Lobo called separately for one more payment of Rs 65,000 to get clearance that the gift wasn't part of terrorism activities. She told them she no longer needed the gifts, and lodged a complaint with the cyber crime police.
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