Italian Woman FIRs Alleged Gurugram Romance Scam

GURUGRAM: Italian jewellery designer Paola Bertolini has approached Gurugram Cyber Police and got a case registered after alleging that a man she met on Instagram cheated her of about 1,000 euros on a romance and marriage pretext, police said.

Bertolini flew into the city around 28 September to press the complaint in person. Officers said she had earlier tried to raise the matter from Italy and later contacted Assistant Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Gaurav Fogat through social media in July, after which the Cyber Crime West team took her formal statement and registered an FIR under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Section 318, which deals with cheating.

According to the complaint narrative police summarised, the accused built a friendship online, spoke of marriage, and asked for money that she transferred. Police say they have identified a local suspect and are tracing financial trails and device data before an arrest. Those remain allegations until a court decides the case.

Digital trail and cross-border complaint path

Romance and investment frauds routed through Instagram and messaging apps have become a steady load for Gurugram's cyber desks, which handle complaints from both residents and foreign nationals who can show transfers into accounts linked to the city. Officers stressed that Bertolini's FIR rests on her statement, chat records and payment proofs she produced, not on a completed trial.

Cyber Crime West is analysing transaction paths and technical evidence. Police did not publicly name the accused in the first briefing beyond saying a Gurugram-linked man has been identified. Arrest timing, they said, depends on matching bank and device trails to the complaint. No recovery of the euros was confirmed in the initial note.

Foreign complainants often struggle when first reports abroad do not travel into an Indian police station file. Here, the ACP Cyber channel and a physical visit closed that gap. The station now owns the investigation under BNS Section 318. Any extradition or Letters Rogatory step would arise only if the accused is found outside India, which police have not claimed in the opening brief.

Residents should treat marriage-pretext money requests from online contacts as red flags and use official cyber helplines rather than informal mediators. Haryana Police cyber desks accept complaints online and at designated stations; keep chat exports, payment receipts and profile URLs before deleting anything.

For this file, the next public milestones are arrest, if and when evidence supports it, and the charge sheet. Until then, Bertolini is the complainant and the man police are hunting is an accused on allegations of cheating, not a convict. The 1,000 euro figure is what she says she lost, converted roughly to under one lakh rupees at recent rates, small against some cyber hauls but enough for a full BNS cheating case once the trail is proved.

ACP Fogat's cyber wing has asked the complainant to stay reachable in India for follow-up statements while technical teams mirror chat and payment data. Police did not claim cooperation from Instagram's parent company in the first note; that request, if filed, would travel through the usual mutual-legal-assistance path for US-hosted platforms.