Lady doctor conned by online cheats

A 24-year-old lady doctor from Bangalore, who chased a job at the United Nations, ended up losing nearly Rs 500,000 to online cheats.

According to officials at the cyber crime police station in Bangalore, Deepa B M, an ayurveda doctor, who was looking for a job abroad, had posted her resume on a popular job portal during January 2007.

She was excited when she received an e-mail on January 23 from one David Cameron, who posed as a “Recruitment Officer, US Committee for UN”, and offered her a job. Deepa even received employment and interview forms for the post of health officer at Qatar though the e-mail from him.

The unsuspecting Deepa filled up the forms sent by David Cameron and e-mailed the same back to him. The next day, she received an e-mail asking her to send a scanned copy of her passport and a passport-sized photograph to him. He also asked her to get in touch one Blessing Libi, “a Training Manager”, for a month-long training and job orientation course in Paris.

On January 28, Deepa wrote to Blessing Libi, who replied with details of the training. She also asked Deepa to send US $ 1,700 (Rs 77,639) as training and registration fee to a particular account number in a bank in Taipei in Taiwan. Deepa sent the money through telegraphic transfer from her account in a bank in Bangalore.

On February 12, Blessing Libi asked Deepa to send another US $ 2,796 (Rs 1,25,198) for accommodation in Paris. Six days later, Deepa received another e-mail from one Albert Arkansas to send $ 3,550 (Rs 160,274) for processing her visa, flight tickets and courier charges. Deepa went on obliging the online cheats till she had sent a total of $ 10,476 (Rs 469,746).

The lady doctor realized that she had been conned only when the “UN officials” began giving her excuses for the delay in issuing her the visa, tickets and other papers.

Eventually, Deepa filed a case in the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court in Bangalore, which referred the case to the cyber crime police station. The cyber crime police station has taken up the case and registered a First Information Report (FIR) against the persons posing as representatives of the “US Committee for UN”, whose official address is given as “Two UN Plaza, 24th Floor, New York 10017, USA”.