Fake marriage proposal

How it is done

A gorgeous woman wants to get to know you, with marriage in mind.

Conned

In a recent case, Indian national Bharani Indran, 32, a software engineer in the US, was fooled by a Singaporean woman he got to know through a Yahoo Internet chatroom in September 2004. They exchanged photographs.

But the woman, Maliha Ramu, 36, sent him a picture of a gorgeous Indian actress, and he asked to marry her.

A convoluted scam followed in which he wired nearly US$45,000 to her. Meanwhile, she kept postponing their marriage date. Mr Bharani finally grew suspicious when she asked for another US$10,000 in May 2005.

He flew here and reported the scam. Maliha was jailed for six months in March.

Tips

Stay away from love at first site - chatrooms or e-mail from Internet sites, that is.

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