In a recent case of fraud on social networking sites, the accused created a fake account on Facebook under the name of Marathi singer and actor Adarsh Shinde to attract money. On Friday, a case was registered with Nigdi Police Station against Santosh Ujagre.
Adarsh is the son of Anand Shinde and grandson of Pralad, both of whom are musicians in the film industry. He received calls from about 15 fans reporting the fake account and asking about the money he borrowed from them. “When a few of my fans called to enquire if everything was alright at my end, I got suspicious. Later, I realised that someone had created a fake account under my name and was taking money under the pretext of giving them jobs in the film industry,” Adarsh said.
One of Adarsh’s friends, who lives in Pune, had also landed up, paying Rs 10,000 to Ujagre, from July 2016 till recently. Ujagre got in touch with women through the fake account and promised them a job in the film industry in return for some money ranging from Rs 5,000 to 15,000.+ After registering a complaint, Nigdi police, along with cyber experts, managed to trace the IP address of the accused, but they are yet to find out his home address or any other contact information.
Inspector Avtade of Nigdi police station, who is investigating the case, said, “We have identified the individual and, hopefully, will get his address soon. We keep trying to inform people that they must not fall for such gimmicks and must always be alert when using social media platforms. We are assuming that there are many more frauds that this man will be involved in.”
Adarsh told Mirror,“There are several people who get duped on a regular basis because of such scams. People simply need to approach something like this with a little more logic. Why would I ask my fans for money, and such small amounts at that? We must stop blindly trusting people. More than it harming my reputation, the reason we decided to complain is so that people stop getting duped by the accused.”
Ujagre has been booked under Section 420 for fraud and Section 500 for defamation under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
