The Chickballapur cybercrime police on Friday arrested a 45-year-old woman for allegedly running a fraudulent scheme on matrimonial websites. After losing her husband a few years ago, the accused, identified as Komala, registered on multiple matrimonial platforms not to find a life partner but to lure unsuspecting men with promises of marriage, the police said.
Operating under different names, Komala would engage in conversations with men seeking serious relationships and lure them. She portrayed herself as a well-off woman looking for a second chance at love. Over time, she would gain their trust and eventually convince them to transfer money for various reasons, such as medical emergencies or urgent financial needs related to her deceased husband’s debts, the police said.
Komala’s tactics were meticulous, she would spend many days chatting with her targets to build a rapport before asking for money. She even provided fake documents and staged emotional calls to make her story more convincing, a senior official who arrested her said.
Using this modus operandi, the accused targeted Raghavendra, 35, of Gauribidanur, introducing herself as a widow with no family and claiming that she was expecting ₹6 crore of compensation following her husband’s death. She allegedly told Raghavendra that the money was stuck as she could not pay taxes and promised to marry him if he helped her pay the taxes. Excited by her offer, Raghavendra transferred a total of ₹7.4 lakh to a bank account, which the police later traced to the mother of Komala. The cheating came to light as Komala blocked Raghavendra from chatting and switched off her phone as soon as the money was transferred.
After repeated attempts to approach her failed, Raghavendra filed a complaint with the Chickballapur CEN police station on August 23. Based on the complaint, the police tracked down the accused to Bengaluru and arrested her.
“Probe revealed that Komala is a habitual offender and is involved in multiple similar cases,” Kushal Chouksey, Superintendent of Police of Chickballapur, said. According to the police, Komala had duped a businessman in Gujarat and taken ₹25,000 and she had also taken ₹1.5 lakh from one Nagaraju of Bengaluru. Two more people approached the police soon after she was arrested and filed similar complaints, the police said.
The accused was married to a KPTCL employee who died in 2017. The accused has two children aged 20 and 16. The police could recover a total of ₹20,940 along with an expensive mobile phone and a watch. The accused had spent the rest of the money, the police said.
Published - August 31, 2024 11:34 pm IST
