A 67-year-old man recently fell prey to scammers who promised heavy returns on investment in share trading and duped him to the tune of Rs 1.86 crore.
According to the cyber crime police of Pune, the complainant, a resident of Pune, while surfing his Facebook account, the complainant came across an advertisement regarding share market investment. He clicked on the post and his mobile number was added to a 132-member WhatsApp group. In the said group, members were discussing the profits they had generated through their investment experience.
Later, the accused scammer shared a web link with the complainant and asked him to register through the said link and download a trading app on his phone. On the instructions of the scammers, the complainant initially invested some amount and could see his profit on the trading app.
In two months, the complainant kept transferring money in different bank accounts in around 20 transactions and ended up transferring Rs1.86 crore and could see his virtual earning of Rs54 crore on the bogus trading app.
On January 16, when he tried to withdraw his earnings, his withdrawal requests were denied. When he confronted the scammers, he was asked to pay more money to get his earnings released. The victim then realised that he had been duped. The case was registered under sections 318 (cheating), 319 (cheating by personation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
