A 65-year-old woman from Mumbai has been scammed out of ₹1.30 crore in a sophisticated cyber fraud scheme that involved scammers impersonating officials from various organizations, including the Customs Department and the Reserve Bank of India.
The victim, who lived in the Chandivali area of Powai until June 2024 before moving to Byculla, shared her story with the police, revealing that her ordeal began in April 2023. She had met a man named Paul Rutherford on an international dating app. Rutherford claimed to be an American civil engineer working in the Philippines and spun a tale about a fatal accident at his construction site. He asserted that he needed funds to avoid deportation back to the U.S. Moved by his story, the woman sent him nearly ₹70 lakh in Bitcoin, even borrowing money from relatives to do so, as he promised to repay her quickly.
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The situation escalated in June when Rutherford informed her that he had sent a parcel containing 2 million US dollars. Shortly thereafter, the woman received a call from someone identifying as Priya Sharma, claiming to work at the Delhi airport. Sharma told her that the parcel had been intercepted by the Customs department and instructed the woman to pay various fees and taxes to release it. She directed the victim to transfer money to different bank accounts.
From June 2023 to March 2024, the woman complied, making multiple deposits as instructed. According to a police officer involved in the case, “The fraud didn’t stop there.” The scammers then posed as Bank of America representatives, claiming they had received the funds released by Customs and had sent her an ATM card. Following this, she received calls from individuals pretending to be officials from the International Monetary Fund and the Reserve Bank of India, who requested further deposits to facilitate an exchange of dollars for Indian currency, allegedly amounting to ₹17 crore.
Despite transferring a total of ₹1,29,43,661, the woman continued to receive calls from supposed authorities, which eventually made her suspicious. After realizing she had been deceived, she approached the cyber police for help. Given her previous address in Chandivali, an FIR was filed at the West Region Cyber Police station, invoking relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.
The police have begun their investigation but have yet to identify any leads to track down the fraudsters involved in this elaborate scheme.
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