Matchmaking site fraud; 51-year-old Indian woman imprisoned in Singapore
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SINGAPORE: A 51-year-old woman of Indian origin was sentenced by a Singapore court to seven months in prison on Tuesday for defrauding an Indian man and his father of more than 5,000 SGD by posing as a young woman on a match-making website.
TODAY newspaper reports that Maliha Ramu uploaded a fake profile for a 25-year-old unmarried woman named Keerthana on a Tamil matrimonial website. Maliha used photos of her relative and avoided video calls, saying she worked at a military base abroad and was not allowed to use a camera phone.
On Tuesday, she pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud and three similar cases were considered for sentencing. She was jailed 15 years ago for similar offenses committed in 2006 and 2007, which involved larger sums of money.
In one case, she made friends with victims in India and Australia, promising to marry them, and instead swindled 225,000 SGD from them. The court said she was a widow and self-employed at the time of the latest crime
In November 2018, the father of her victim, Govindandhanasekaran Murallikrishna, signed up for an account on the matchmaking website to find a partner for his 29-year-old son. When the victim's father contacted her over the website, she requested him to speak to her mother on her home number, PTI reported.
However, Maliha's mother had passed away in 2002, and she lived alone. She acted as Keertana's mother and gave permission to Govindandhanasekaran to speak to 'her daughter'. Maliha, who has been playing the role of Kirtana ever since, spoke to Govindanasekharan through WhatsApp messages and calls.
She told them that as she was working as a counselor at a military base in Australia, she was unable to use camera phone as it was against the rules. For this reason, she declined his request for video calls.
In order to deepen the ruse she also sent him photographs of her 27-year-old niece-in-law, who works in the Singapore Armed Forces, and claimed that it was her itself. She convinced him that Keertana would marry him when she returned from Australia, saying her contract would end in May 2019.
But when that date came, she lied that there was a three month extension in her contract. She said her mother was ill and in the United States with her brother, so she could not discuss marriage with her.
Claiming a need for cash to assist her social work clients, she asked Govindandhanasekaran for money. On four occasions, a total of SGD 4,750 was transferred by him from December 2018 to October 2019. She also took over SGD 1,000 from his father.