Beware! Foreign friends on Facebook may steal your cash

Beware! Next time you receive a friendship request from any foreigner on your Facebook account, you should accept it only after completely checking the person’s antecedents. If you accept the request without knowing much about your new FB friend, there are chances that you may be duped of your money like several women have been in the recent past in the national capital.

The police are busy investigating cases where women have been duped by their foreign FB friends. One such case is of a senior Delhi government officer who had accepted a similar request from a person, who had introduced himself as an American citizen about a year ago. The unmarried officer used to regularly chat with her so called American friend. A couple of months ago her friend told her that he was visiting India. As the officer was eagerly awaiting to meet her friend in Delhi, he told her that he was stuck at some other airport as he had misplaced his money. On the request of her American FB friend, she transferred some money into his account.

The officer got another request from him for more money so that he could get his goods cleared from the customs department. In all, the officer ended up transferring about Rs 18 lakh into the account of her American friend. To her utter surprise, she later discovered that her friend had opened a fake FB account. The officer immediately contacted the AAP government’s home department, which has transferred the matter to the city police.

Like this unmarried officer, another married Delhi government employee too had made a foreigner as her new FB friend. One day her friend told her that he had got her a necklace worth Rs 1 crore and he needed money to get it cleared from the Customs department. The woman is said to have transferred about Rs 12 lakh to her friend’s account. Later, she too discovered that she had been duped. She too approached the home department to take up the matter with the city police.

Like these two employees, another married woman was told by her FB friend to deposit money into the account of a particular company so that he could get her gifts cleared from the customs wing. He told her that she should show the company’s receipt to the customs officers to get her gifts. But to her utter dismay, the customs officers told her that no such company existed in the country.

Preliminary investigations show that some people from African countries had been duping Indian woman on the pretext that they were either from the United States and other European countries.