A 25-year-old man was arrested for allegedly posing as a pilot on social media and conning at least 30 women of lakhs of rupees in Gurgaon, police said.
The accused, Hemant Sharma, 25, was arrested on Tuesday from the Sector 43 area. A district court on Wednesday sent Sharma to judicial custody, police added.
After a woman filed a complaint at a cyber crime police station, alleging that a man befriended her on a social media platform saying he was a pilot and cheated her of Rs 1.02 lakh online, an FIR was registered against the accused under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating) of Indian Penal Code and Section 66 D of the IT Act.
The police found that Sharma had created a fake profile and befriended 150 women on Instagram. “He would claim to be a pilot and specifically targeted women working as flight crew and flight attendants. After befriending them, he would ask them for money in good faith and concocted false stories that he required money urgently for an emergency. He would promise to return the money later. He would ask women to transfer the money online in his bank account and then stopped responding to their messages,” Subhash Boken, spokesperson, Gurgaon police, said.
Police said the accused had downloaded several pictures from an online app for his fake profile on social media. “Using this modus operandi, he cheated over 30 women and took money worth several lakhs from them,” said Boken.
Police have recovered a debit card, a mobile phone and two SIM cards from the accused.
