51-year-old Indian girl jailed in Singapore for duping man on matchmaking web site 

A 51-year-old Indian-origin girl was on Tuesday sentenced to seven months’ jail by a Singapore court docket for duping an Indian man and his father of greater than SGD 5,000 by masquerading as a youthful girl on a matchmaking web site.

Maliha Ramu had posted a faux profile for a 25-year-old single girl named Keerthana on the Tamil Matrimony web site, TODAY newspaper reported.

Maliha used her relative’s pictures and averted video calls by saying she labored at a military base abroad and was not allowed to make use of a digital camera telephone.

On Tuesday, she pleaded responsible to 2 dishonest expenses, with one other three related counts considered for sentencing.

She had already served jail time some 15 years in the past for related offences dedicated in 2006 and 2007, involving a lot bigger sums of cash. In one case, she befriended victims in India and Australia, promising to marry them however dishonest them of SGD 225,000 as a substitute.

The court docket heard that on the time of her newest offences, she was widowed and self-employed.

In November 2018, the daddy of her sufferer, Govindandhanasekaran Murallikrishna, signed up for an account on the matchmaking web site to discover a accomplice for his 29-year-old son.

When the sufferer’s father contacted her via the web site, she requested him to name on her dwelling quantity and converse to her mom. However, Maliha’s mom had died in 2002 and she or he lived alone. She pretended as Keerthana’s mom and gave her approval for Govindandhanasekaran to talk to Keerthana.

From then on, posing as Keerthana, Maliha spoke to Govindandhanasekaran via WhatsApp textual content messages and calls.

She advised them that she labored as a counsellor at a military base in Australia and was not allowed to make use of a digital camera telephone. Because of that, she rejected his requests for video calls.

She additionally despatched him pictures of her 27-year-old niece-in-law, who works for the Singapore Armed Forces, to guide him to consider this was what Keerthena seemed like.

She led him to consider that Keerthana would marry him when she returned from Australia, saying that her employment contract would finish in May 2019. But when that date got here round, she additional lied that her contract had been prolonged for 3 extra months.

She additionally stated her mom was sick and was within the United States together with her brother, so she was unable to debate their wedding ceremony with them.

She requested Govindandhanasekaran for cash after claiming she wanted money to assist her social work purchasers. From December 2018 to October 2019, he transferred her SGD 4,750 in whole over 4 events. She additionally took over SGD 1,000 from his father.