Cops: American Tourist Ran Out of Cash, Faked Her Own Kidnapping

Police in India say a "kidnapping" they were asked to investigate turned out to be an American woman's attempt to extort money from her own parents. Police say 27-year-old Chloe Mclaughlin arrived in New Delhi on May 3 and faked her own kidnapping earlier this month after she ran out of money, the National reports. She called her mother on July 7 and said she was being held in an "unsafe location" and had been assaulted. Police say Mclaughlin's father, a former military officer from Washington, DC, contacted Indian authorities and the American embassy in New Delhi.

Investigators used IP addresses to trace Mclaughlin's calls to Okoroafor Chibuike Okoro, a 31-year-old Nigerian national, the BBC reports. He told them she was staying in an apartment on the outskirts of the city—but police determined that rather than having been kidnapped, she met Okoro on Facebook before arriving in India and had been staying with him since her arrival. "After her rescue, it was revealed that she had staged the incident to blackmail her parents," said New Delhi's deputy commissioner of police, Amrutha Guguloth. Police say Mclaughlin's visa expired in early June. Okoro's passport was also expired. "They both will be deported," Gugloth tells the National. (More India stories.)