Kalyan:

A 45-year-old Dombivli woman recently approached the Thane cyber

cell alleging she was duped of Rs 1.2 crore by a US resident whom she had befriended on a

website, and by as many as 36 of his associates, over a span of 15 months.

The main accused introduced himself as a Los Angeles-based businessman who lived in a 4BHK flat—an obvious draw in space-starved Mumbai. The accused, Robert (name changed on police request), approached the woman on the website on May 19, 2014, saying he was looking for an Indian bride as he found the country’s women to be “good-natured”.

In her police complaint, the victim said after declaring his intent to marry her “very soon” and winning her trust, the accused began to ask her for money citing temporary financial difficulty or an emergency. The woman believed him blindly and took several loans and even mortgaged one of her flats to “help him out” by transferring funds into various overseas accounts. Currently, the victim is using most of her earnings to repay the loans.

In one instance, the accused claimed to have met with an accident while headed to the UK for a business deal and required Rs 26 lakh to take a chartered flight back home to the US. He also asked for another Rs 4 lakh for medicines. Another time, he said he was arrested and required money to bribe cops. This pattern continued to play out till September 2015 when she began to refuse him money citing rising debts, and he began to avoid her.

The victim told

TOI:

“After I got cheated, I looked for and found several fake profiles online. The person who cheated me is once again active on the site with fake details.” She has now appealed to women to not trust

profiles blindly.

The woman told cops that whenever she would get upset about transferring money to the man, she would get in touch with a US-based “priest” who claimed to be his “acquaintance”. He would reassure her that Robert was a good person.

The woman finally approached the police in December 2015, after she read a report of an arrest in a similar matrimonial online fraud. She first went to the local Ramnagar police station in Dombivli and was directed to Thane

police. “After getting a report from Thane cyber cell, we registered a case against 37 people, including a man and others in whose name the accused had got funds deposited. We have forwarded the case to the cyber

as it is an international

,” said Sunil Shivadkar, senior PI, Ramnagar police.