‘Rs 60 lakh for foreign citizenship’: German woman, 64, arrested for fraud in Delhi

Nearly a year after the Delhi Police lodged an FIR against a 64-year-old German woman, claiming to be the daughter of a former Madhya Pradesh law secretary, for allegedly luring a Delhi man into paying Rs 60 lakh under the false pretext of facilitating German citizenship, the woman was arrested earlier this week.

On Wednesday, Patiala House Court Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Animesh Kumar remanded the woman to two days of police custody.

The Magistrate Court reasoned that “detailed investigation is also required regarding money trail, to verify the involvement of other accused persons in the conspiracy” and to recover electronic devices with incriminating evidence.

According to the police, the efforts to trace the accused, identified as Poonam Jezzler, and her husband in India had earlier failed as she is a German citizen living in Switzerland.  Police had then subsequently opened a lookout circular (LOC) notice, and her Indian bank account was frozen.

She was detained at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) when she landed in India this week, and was arrested on October 13.

Poonam Jezzler’s counsels had opposed her police remand as well as filed for a bail application on Wednesday, which they later withdrew. In her bail plea, which was also opposed by the complainant’s advocate Gagan Bhatnagar, Poonam had stated that she was unaware of the complaint or the LOC against her, and that she comes from a respectable “family background”, her father being a law secretary in Madhya Pradesh government, who has now passed away.

She had also pointed out that she is a German national and is entitled to protection under the Vienna Convention.

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How the alleged fraud unfolded

The complainant, Pranzal Kumar, last October, had approached the Vasant Kunj police station in Delhi, based on which an FIR was filed without naming any accused. The FIR was lodged for the offences of breach of trust, cheating and conspiracy.

According to Kumar, he met the accused, Poonam Jezzler, and her husband first in 2021 in Switzerland while he was pursuing an MBA from the city of Lucerne.  The Jezzlers, he claimed, told him that they were running an immigration consultancy business service for worldwide immigration, and that Poonam had experience in facilitating citizenship of various countries.

Kumar alleged that the Jezzlers encouraged him to settle abroad, and though he expressed willingness to obtain a US citizenship, the Jezzlers allegedly urged him that they can “easily” get him a German citizenship in exchange of Rs 1.10 crore in six months.

The FIR notes Kumar’s claims that the Jezzlers in September 2024 raised an invoice to Kumar’s father for CHF 50,000 (nearly Rs 50 lakh) along with details of a bank account. Kumar claims that his father, “in blind trust”, transferred Rs 50 lakh to the account.

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Kumar alleges that Poonam pressured him to further pay the balance amount, following which Kumar transferred another Rs 10 lakh to her account.  However, he claims that he realised that no proof of his immigration process was being provided, and the Jezzlers allegedly “confessed that they had conspired to cheat” Kumar and his family.