Mumbai cyber safe: Woman loses ₹6.8 lakh to fake investment scheme on Instagram account

Mumbai: Beware of Instagram posts promising extraordinary returns on investments as it could be a scam. A 23-year-old Nalasopara woman recently came across a post on a friend’s account promising Rs4 lakh within four hours by investing Rs50,000 in bitcoins. The victim fell into the trap and lost Rs6.83 lakh only to realise that her friend’s account has been hacked into.

The complainant works with a private company in Andheri and saw the post on March 7. On clicking on a link, she was directed to a webpage and given a user ID to create a trading account where she instantly saw earnings in dollars. However, she was unable to withdraw her earnings. When all the efforts to communicate with the investment agents failed, she suspected something amiss and confronted her friend’s sister, only to realise that the account was hacked into.

On Sunday, the police registered a case on charges of cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, identity theft, and cheating by personation by using computer resources, under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code Information Technology Act.

Mumbai police cautions citizens

According to Cyber Crime Cell under Crime Branch of Mumbai police, the most common form of online frauds are related to banks, online commerce platforms where fraudsters, posing as bank /platform officials, convince the victim to share OTP, KYC updates and sometimes send the links to be clicked to access bank accounts.“People should know that no bank or institution is authorised to demand for bank details or PIN numbers. Unfortunately, educated people are falling prey to online frauds and losing lakhs of rupees,” explained DCP Cyber Crime, Balsingh Rajput.