Maharashtra: 70-Year-Old Raigad Woman Duped Of ₹2.18 Crore By Fraudster In Share Market Investment Scam; Case Registered

Mumbai: A 70-year-old woman has fallen prey to scammers and has lost Rs 2.18 crore in shares investment fraud.

According to the police, the victim is a resident of Raigad. In the last week of April, the victim had received a WhatsApp message from an unknown woman asking if she was interested in investing in the share market. The scammers then got the victim's mobile number in a WhatsApp group and also asked the victim to download a bogus trading app through a web link. The victim created a login ID on the said app.

From time to time the victim was getting messages on the WhatsApp group and one of the members of the said group told the victim that she had been trading for the past two years and is making 20 percent intra day trading profit daily.

She told the victim to trade as well and trusting the said group member, the victim decided to invest. From 30/4/2024 to 27/6/2024, the victim through 18 online transactions ended up transferring Rs 2.18 crore in different beneficiary bank accounts provided by the scammers.

When the victim requested to withdraw some amount of her invested money, she was told by the scammers that she would have to pay tax and only then would she get the money back. The victim told the scammers to deduct the "tax" from my earnings and give her the remaining money. The scammers refused to agree with the victim's request and insisted that she pay the money. Having realised that she had been duped, the victim approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter.

The police have registered a case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.