Faceless Facebook cheat Tuesday, August 13, 2013 By Zuber Ansari Minor duped of Rs.8 lakh by ‘friend’ from social networking site The police have been repeatedly warning that accepting unknown friend requests on online portals have dangerous repercussions, especially when the victims are children. In the latest of many incidents, a minor from Kurla fell into a trap and was robbed of Rs.8 lakh by a ‘friend’ who had uploaded a fictitious profile under the name of RN Joshi on Facebook. The victim and the ‘friend’ remained in constant touch for the past four months, and the accused exchanged pictures with the 16-year-old Kurla resident to establish his genuineness. After being convinced that the accused was a sincere person, the girl chose to divulge information about her family, even providing details about the financial background and where valuables were stored at her home. Having come to know about her well-to-do financial status, the accused hatched a plan to rob the girl and while chatting, told her that his father was lying in a critical state in a well-known hospital in the city. He expressed helplessness at not being able to arrange money for the treatment and being in desperate need of immediate funds. On hearing this, the girl offered to help by getting him the gold from her residence. The accused then gave her details on how to go about the entire plan. Incidentally, the two had never met in their four months of friendship, but had chatted twice a day for two hours on ‘Facebook.’ The accused never displayed any intention of either meeting her or calling her up. When they finally met at the Kurla railway station, the girl grew suspicious about his identity and questioned him about his face not matching his pictures on Facebook. He told her that the pictures were six to seven years old, and he had not uploaded any recent photograph and that is why he appeared different. Two days after he took away the gold, he asked her for the password to her account which he then accessed and deleted all traces of their contact. On realizing her mistake, she narrated the entire incident to her parents and a complaint was registered at the Vinoba Bhave Nagar police station. The police sought help from the Bandra Cyber Crime Cell wherein they monitored RN Joshi’s Facebook friends and were able to get hold of the mobile number of one of his friends based in Bhayander. “We got the mobile number of a Facebook friend who used to stay in Bhayandar, and called him and told him that his friend V.N. Joshi had met with an accident and was admitted to Sion Hospital, and that we wanted to inform his family. But the friend refused to reveal any details, after which we went to his residence in Bhayandar. We learned there that the accused was not V.N. Joshi but was actually Rakesh Wankhede and that the information posted on Facebook was false. He led us to Wankhede’s residence on Tuesday night from where we caught him,” sources added. Police sources added, “We successfully recovered al the gold from his residence and handed him over to V.B. Nagar police station. He was planning to flee to Pune. Crimes through social networking sites are increasing, and via your publication, we wish to request citizens not to accept any friend requests from strangers.”
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 14:43:33 +0000
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