Canada dreams crash; man loses Rs2 lakh to fraudster

A bogus visa consultant of Ahmedabad cheated a father-daughter duo of Rs2 lakh promising to provide them with passports and visa for the family.

Payal Dave, a resident of Bhavnagar, lodged a complaint against Rahul Patel at Naranpura police station on Thursday.

About a month ago, Payal’s father Jayanti Dave had received an SMS, in which the sender claimed to be a visa consultant and promised to provide easy passport and visa to Canada. Since Dave wanted to shift to Canada with his family, he called up on the number which belonged to one Rahul Patel, who identified himself as visa consultant from Ahmedabad.

Patel allegedly promised to complete all the procedures and get them visa and passports. He asked Payal to open a joint account with her father at HDFC bank in Naranpura for visa-related process. She complied.

Meanwhile, Patel won her trust and asked her to hand over the bank kit to him. Putting trust in him, Payal gave him the envelope which had an ATM card and a cheque book. Since there was no balance in the account, Payal was not worried about any misuse.

Once he laid his hands on the bank kit, Patel got information of Dave’s regular bank account. According to the police complaint, he managed to transfer Rs2 lakh from Dave’s original bank account to the HDFC account.

Over the next few days, Patel used the ATM card to withdraw the entire amount. When Dave and Payal got to know of the money transfer and the withdrawals, they lodged a complaint against Patel. The latter is absconding.