When 53-year-old associate director in a leading multinational pharmaceutical company booked tickets to New York through a travel agency he did all possible checks, or so he thought, to make sure everything was in order. But he still got duped.

The pharma company officer told Mumbai' s Sakinaka police that his daughter has got admission for her higher studies in USA and he was planning to go with her to New York. Accordingly in June he went on internet and searched for numbers of all travel agencies.

"One of the agency was providing the cheapest packages for air tickets and stay in New York. I called them and booked two air tickets for New York on August 24 and one return ticket for me. The fraudster on phone asked for an advanced payment but I refused to pay till he got the tickets booked," he told police.

The fraudster then booked the air tickets and sent its invoice to the complainant who cross-checked it on the Airlines website and ascertained that the tickets were indeed booked. Convinced by this he sent Rs 1.20 lakh through net banking.

Last week the complainant who had some queries related to their flight service called on the Airlines customer care and found out that the air tickets were cancelled on the same day. He then called on the number of the travel agent which was switched off. He realised that he had been conned.

He approached the police on August 19 after which an FIR was lodged.