While many online friendships can be harmless, the wrong kind can turn out to be very costly indeed.
A 17-year-old boy from Vishakapatnam was cheated out of Rs 14 lakh on Sunday by a girl who befriended him on Facebook.
According to reports the boy befriended the girl on Facebook and have been chatting with her online for the past few months. The girl fed the 17-year-old tales about being in dire need of money. Believing her, the boy transferred Rs 14 lakh in a series of 34 transactions carried out in a little over one hour on Sunday, The Hindu reported.
As for the money, the 17-year-old depleted his father’s savings for it. The boy's father had recently retired from the Indian Railways and was planning to build a new house with his retirement benefits. He was shocked to learn from bank officials that his account balance had fallen to just Rs 119, local media reports said.
This incident came to light after the boy approached the Vishakapatnam Cybercrime Police on Monday, said The New Indian Express.
Following the complaint, the police tracked the money to an account in Kolkata in West Bengal. A case has been registered and an investigation is on.
Incidentally, Deccan Chronicle reported another case on July 24 of a Vizag woman being swindled by a Facebook ‘friend’. In that case, the 34-year-old woman was swindled out of Rs 46.3 lakh in the name of processing fees for a package of expensive gifts worth over Rs 60 lakh, and for getting a visa and getting placed in a job in the UK.
An Inspector of the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell of Vishakapatnam, said that the case was being probed from multiple angles. “Recently, we sent a request to the social networking giant, Facebook, to preserve the account records and to share some concrete information about the profile,” Inspector V Gopinath told DC.