Top News

Hyderabad: A 70-year-old retired government employee lost approximately Rs 38.73 lakh to cybercriminals impersonating a fictitious woman, extorting money out of the victim, using emotional manipulation, sexual favours, and threats of police complaints over months.

The fraudsters began by sending a friend request to the retiree on Facebook. This was in January 2024.

The cybercriminals built an account of a fictitious person to deceive their victim, and accordingly constructed a complicated and intricate story to go with it.

The account claimed to be a woman from a poor family, whose father had passed away and whose mother worked as a tailor. After gaining the favour and sympathies of the retiree, the cybercriminals asked for funds to install a WiFi connection in the family’s house.

At this point, the cybercriminals began to play various characters in order to make an elaborate and believable plot to trap their victim.

The “poor girl” gave the old man the number of a local cable operator, to whom the retiree sent Rs 10,000, following which the account stopped responding.

Later on, the fake cable operator got in touch with the retiree, claiming the poor girl character had by now become incapacitated due to her quickly degrading health and needed emergency intestinal surgery.

Over the course of time, the retiree sent Rs 10,00,000 to the contact in instalments under the pretext of medical bills post the surgery. The retiree went so far as to share his credit card details, which were used to withdraw an additional Rs 2,65,000.

At this point, cybercriminals impersonating the fictitious girl’s mother and sister began to engage in sexually charged conversations with the retiree. Soon after, the cable operator’s character accused the retiree of talking to his minor sister inappropriately. At this point, a new police constable character entered and suggested that the retiree pay off the family to hush up the matter.

At this point, the scheme of the fraudsters was in full flight.

In the preceding weeks, the retiree was blackmailed into sending huge sums of money, all to fictitious characters. The payments, in chronological order, were the following:

• Rs 12.5 lakh for the girl’s education and her mother’s DWCRA loan,
• Rs 10 lakh to a man claiming to be a sub-inspector (SI),
• Rs 1 lakh to the original constable himself,
• Rs 7.37 lakh to a newly introduced SI for avoiding POCSO charges.

Throughout, the victim was forced to make video calls to speak to different characters, all of whom refused to show their face. The blackmail was done like so.

The retiree was asked for a further payment of Rs 6.5 lakh for the grandfather of the girl, Rs 20 lakh more for the sub-inspector to stop the fictitious complaint from being lodged.

In total, the retiree sent the cybercriminals Rs 38,73,150 over the course of nearly a year and a half, before filing a complaint with the Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police Unit through their online website.

The police have been unable to indetify the sourceof the fraud