SHILLONG: Despite the city police coming out with several advisories, girls from Shillong continue to falls victims to cyber fraud perpetrated through social networking sites.
The spate of cyber crimes in the city is on the rise with numerous people, especially the womenfolk, being duped by unknown people whose modus operandi is to befriend girls mostly through the social networking site Facebook.
In the latest case, one lady has been duped of Rs.2,16,030 by unknown miscreants.
According to police, a lady whose identity has been withheld, lodged a complaint at Lumdiengjri PS that on October 20, one of her ‘Facebook friends’ from Scotland had duped her of Rs.2,16,030 and also threatened to upload her photograph and her mobile number on the internet.
This is not the first instance when a girl from Shillong has been duped in this fashion.
The usual plot in these cases is that the miscreants create a fake Facebook account with a handsome profile with offshore addresses and send friend requests to girls and women. They then befriend the unsuspecting victims and develop intimate online intimacies. Later, the fake user finds an opportunity like birthday or Valentine’s Day or any other special occasion and pretends to have dispatched a special gift or a parcel for the victim who then gets a call, usually from a lady, claiming to be from the Customs department.
The caller tells the victim that the parcel or gift has been confiscated and the victim has to deposit a certain sum of money in a bank account.
It is only after the money is deposited that the victim finds out the she has been cheated.