Impersonating as woman on matrimonial site, fraudster dupes lakhs from user in Odisha

Bhubaneswar Cyber Police on Friday arrested a person for creating a fake ID of a woman on a matrimonial site and duping a user. 

Informing about the case details, Bhubaneswar DCP Prateek Singh said, “A person was looking for a match for himself. He visited a matrimonial site and after creating a profile, he was browsing for a suitable match. He came across the profile of Deepa Pradhan. He contacted her and subsequently, they started chatting on WhatsApp, and their relationship developed. Some days later, Deepa started asking the complainant to give her some money showing several excuses like family issues and father’s health problem. Since he wanted to marry her, he transferred money amounting to Rs 3,18,000 to her account on two to three occasions through Google Pay.”

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“He started suspecting her as she would keep avoiding his wish to meet her and chat with her through video-calling. He then lodged a complaint at the cyber police station on November 15, 2023. Registering a case, the cyber police launched a probe. During the investigation, it came to the fore that Deepa Pradhan is not a woman but a man identified as Nrusingha Biswal, a resident of an area under Sadar police limits in Puri,” he said. 

“Biswal had created an account in her wife’s name on a matrimonial site and was looking for his targets. The complainant rose to the bait and became his victim. We have seized Rs 1,61,000 in cash, five ATM cards, two SIM cards, and three mobile phones. To find out if any other person has been contacted from the same ID, we have written letters to the said matrimonial site and other such sites. After getting information from them, we can know how many persons have been duped by him,” he said. 

The DCP requested people to meet their matrimonial matches personally, gather more information about them, and refrain from paying money online.