Mumbai man helping Ukrainian woman open business in India loses Rs 3.3 crores
The scammer initially inquired about purchasing machinery equipment from his company but later proposed a business partnership.
In another recent case of cybercrime, a Mumbai businessman has been scammed of Rs 3.3 crores by an allegedly Ukrainian woman. The woman first contacted the businessman who owns a private company under the pretext of inquiring about purchasing machinery equipment and even offered to send him a box of cash worth $9.7 lakh, equivalent to Rs 8 crore in Indian currency from her country to India.
Following the proposal, the businessman kept in contact through e-mail and agreed to her business proposal. The businessman also got an ID number of Esema for the parcel containing the box of money from Ukraine to India. However, everything went south when he received a call that the box was intercepted in Jakarta and that he would have to pay money to retrieve the box from the Indonesian authorities.
The victim was repeatedly asked to send money by the person who claimed to be an authority figure. The person made various demands including providing clearance certificates and transferring fees to anonymous accounts, under the threat of legal action. Additionally, the victim was also instructed to submit numerous documents, including income tax reports, a power of attorney, insurance documents, and various certificates which the elderly man did and spent almost Rs 3.3 crores with the hope of recovering the seized money worth Rs 8 crores. However, in spite of doing everything the scammer said, the businessman never received the money and even the scammer stopped communication.
This is unfortunately, not the first instance of a victim filing a complaint about an overseas individual promising to send a parcel or money, only to end up paying a significant amount to recover the alleged sum. A similar case came to light earlier when a woman filed a complaint about her Bumble match, who was supposedly apprehended by authorities for possessing excessive sums of money. However, both the Bumble match and the call from the authorities were fabricated and were part of a grand scheme orchestrated by scammers to extort money.
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