US Woman Arrested In India For Staging Own Kidnapping To Extort Money From Parents

A U.S. resident who arrived in India to stay with a man whom she met online staged her own kidnapping in a bid to extort money from her parents, local authorities said Sunday.

The woman, identified as Chloe Mclaughlin, 27, is the daughter of an ex-army officer in the U.S. now residing in Washington D.C., NDTV reported.

Mclaughlin, who arrived in the Indian capital of Delhi on May 3, called her mother on July 7 claiming that she was being held captive in an "unsafe environment," cops revealed.

The woman told her mother that her captor, who had also been physically assaulting her, was someone known to her.

Mclaughlin video called her mother again via Whatsapp on July 10 but the call was disconnected when a man entered the room. On neither of the two occasions did the woman disclose her location to her mother.

The woman's mother had approached the authorities in India after receiving the first call, and the U.S. Embassy forwarded the matter to the New Delhi District police, DNA India reported. A case was registered two and a half months after the woman arrived in India.

The American Embassy figured that the woman was encountering abuse and was being prevented from contacting her family, Amrutha Guguloth, Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi, told NDTV.

Delhi police launched an investigation based on the complaint of the woman's mother at the Chanakyapuri police station.

In order to pinpoint her exact location through an email she had sent after the first call to her mother, the Indian police sought help from Yahoo.com to identify the IP address. Mclaughlin had sent an e-mail to American Citizen Services regarding her immigration document work on July 9.

Authorities tracked her immigration form at the Bureau of Immigration and found that the address she provided was in Greater Noida.

A police team arrived at the location and raided a hotel Mclaughlin was suspected of having stayed in but did not find anyone by the name in the books. Meanwhile, investigators also found that Mclaughlin was using someone else's WiFi when she made the video call to her mother.

Police analyzed the details of the mobile number and the IP address associated with it, and were able to track down and arrest 31-year-old Nigerian national Okoroafor Chibuike Okoro, alias Rechi, from Gurugram.

Mclaughlin had used Rechi's phone to make calls to her mother in the U.S. During interrogation, Rechi also revealed the woman's whereabouts which led to her arrest.

Upon being questioned, Mclaughlin admitted to the cops that she staged her kidnapping after running out of money. She, along with her boyfriend Rechi, whom she met on Facebook, hatched a plan to extort money from her parents.

Mclaughlin was also overstaying her visit to a foreign country for at least a month as her passport expired on June 6. The woman said Rechi influenced her to come to India as they were both passionate about singing. The couple was living together in a hotel in the Greater Noida location.

Police learned during the investigation that Rechi's passport had also expired. Legal action is being taken against the duo for overstaying in India without a valid passport and visa, police told NDTV.