Man loses money in UK without being there

IF you ignore e-mails from strangers telling you that you have won a lottery and need to send some money to claim it, you are alert. However, don't let your guard down because a mail from a friend in distress, stuck in a foreign land, requiring money to return home, could well be fake too.
When business associates and friends in the contact list of V K Mohanarangan ,a man living in South India, received mails about his plight, most of them started calling his number, while a kind hearted friend even sent money worth $1000 . The mail said Mohanarangan was in trouble, having lost all valuables and passport, and immediately required $1200, which could be wire transferred to the hotel in UK from where he needed to check out.
On getting calls from people inquiring if everything was okay with him and if he needed help, Mohanarangan, who deals in engineering machine accessories and has an official e-mail id, realized something was amiss.
He looked into the matter and realized that the messages had indeed gone from his id, which apparently had been hacked. Using his techie friends, he found out that the e-mail had been sent from Nigeria. He approached the suburban commissioner of police, S R Jangid, and filed a complaint.
Though similar mail traps have been heard of, this is perhaps the first time in the city that someone has complained to the police about his mail being hacked.