A 40-year-old software engineer was cheated to the tune of Rs 75,000 by an online fraudster posing as the wife of an Indian Army Colonel planning to move to Pune, on the pretext of renting his property in the city. A First Information Report in the case was registered at Hinjewadi police station on Thursday by the software engineer, who lives in a Pune suburb and works for an Information Technology solutions company in the city. Officials said that the complainant owns another flat in a different part of the city, which he has advertised on a well-known real estate portal. On May 14, the complainant received a call from a woman who identified herself as the wife of a serving Army Colonel. She told him that her husband had been transferred to Pune and that they were looking for rented accommodation. She said that they liked his flat and showed interest in renting it. The complainant and the caller finalised it on a deposit of Rs 25,000 and a monthly rent of Rs 13,000. Officials said that the caller at this point asked the complainant to use the digital payment service app. The caller on the pretext of making him use some feature of the app asked him to fill details of a bank account and fill up the amount of Rs 25,000. The complainant trusted her as she asked when Rs 25,000 was deducted from his account. The woman said that there was a confusion in filling details and asked him to do the same transaction again for Rs 50,000. After which Rs 50,000 was deducted from his account. It was at this point that he realised that he had been cheated. He recently approached the police after which an FIR under charges of cheating and criminal breach of trust was registered. Assistant Inspector Ganesh Kharge said, "The complainant has lost the money in two transactions as he filled in the details in the app without questioning what she was asking. We have launched a probe into the cell number and bank account used by the cyber fraudsters." Officials said that cases of cheating through online property dealing and marketplace platforms by online fraudsters posing as serving Army personnel and officers were reported in large numbers in the recent past. In the first week of May, following leads provided by the Military Intelligence (MI) unit of Pune-headquartered Southern Command, a module of cyber criminals — who were cheating citizens across the country posing as Army officials — was busted in a joint operation by police forces from multiple states. Probe has revealed that to evade arrest by police from various states, these criminals operate from the Bharatpur-Mewat region which borders multiple states to create crime jurisdiction complexities and also use multiple SIM cards, cellphones and bank accounts.
