Mumbai, July 12: A 67-year-old retired banker from RBI, Sucheta Arun Paudwal, lost Rs 4.40 crore in the name of earning more money by investing in shares. The cyber gang has cheated the lady and her husband of the entire savings that was meant for their retired life.
The 67-year-old woman who lived with her husband in Kharghar, was manager with the RBI. Last April, the woman tried to find a firm on Google with the intention of earning money by investing in shares.
She had then clicked on the link of a firm and entered her details after which she was added to a WhatsApp group created by conmen. The woman saw that the others in the group were investing and getting good returns in the share market trading and hence she initially invested Rs 50,000.
After that, the woman started buying and selling shares as per the instructions given by the cyber gang members. She was made to believe that she was earning good profit and also let her withdraw Rs 5.93 lakh to win her confidence.
The conmen then asked her to transfer money to different banks on the pretext of buying IPO, block trading, upper circuit, OTC market. Her account then started reflecting that she made a profit of Rs 15.73 crore and hence she kept investing more and more amount. In all, she invested Rs 4.40 crore in trading.
Last month, the complainant tried to withdraw Rs 5 crore from the trading account but the she wasn’t able to withdraw. “The conmen told her that there is a procedure to withdraw such huge money and by attempting to do so without following the protocol, she violated the norms of SEBI and she will have to pay a fine of Rs 4 crore. If she failed to do so, she would lose the entire amount of Rs 15 crore profit that she earned in trading,” a police official from Cyber police station said.
That is when the complainant felt something was a miss and spoke to her husband and consulted some other people and found that they were being conned. On July 10, they registered a case with Navi Mumbai Cyber police station and the investigations are on.
