Woman loses Rs 2 lakh in online lottery scam

CHENNAI: A week after a 22-year-old B Tech graduate committed suicide after being duped in an online lottery scheme and losing Rs 60,000, a commerce graduate on Tuesday filed a complaint at the suburban commissionerate, alleging that she had lost Rs two lakh in a similar manner.
Krithika, a resident of Thiruneermalai, alleged that she deposited Rs two lakh after receiving an email from a lottery agent in Nigeria promising to gift her Rs three crore as prize money if she paid delivery charges'.
According to suburban cyber crime police stealing money from people using the internet has become a major white-collar offence. Despite large amounts of money being involved in such scams, police say it is difficult to track the fraudsters as most of them function from outside the country.
"Prevention is better than cure is the mantra to be followed here. Internet users need to be aware of such frauds and not fall prey to them. In the last few weeks, we have received reports of three such incidents. The victims are always educated people who realise they have been conned only after they have parted with their money," says R Veeraperumal, assistant commissioner of police, cyber crime. Police state that online scam cases are seldom reported as people who are conned do not like to face embarrassment.
The seriousness of online scams was brought to light after the death of Robin Surender in his house in Peerkankaranai on February 11. Surender in his suicide note had stated that he held the agents, who had posed as working for a well known courier company, responsible for his death. "I decided to do this because of the shame and of losing so much money to these fraudsters&Don't let them get away, hunt them down before more people like me fall into their trap," his suicide note read.
Surender was awaiting employment when he received a mail from a person who called himself Mark Harrison, stating that Surender had won Rs five crores. Like Krithika, Surender was asked to pay an upfront fee in order to receive the amount. The son of a railway police constable had pawned jewels and dug into his savings to deposit Rs 60,000 into a bank account that was specified by the fraudster. Only much later did Surender realise that he was fooled. He finally committed suicide by consuming rat poison.
In Surender's case, police officials have tracked the sender's Internet Protocol (IP) address to two locations in London and Delhi and a team is set to go to Delhi to track down the people responsible.
Cyber crime officials have issued an eight-point advisory to prevent online scams, better known as Nigerian scams' as most of the senders state that they are from that country.