Mumbai: Bitcoin curiosity turns costly, woman loses Rs 36 lakh

Curiosity in bitcoins turned costly for a 67-year-old woman from Khar who lost over ₹36 lakh in the name of bitcoin investments. The fraudsters persued the woman for several months and made her to invest into their purported schemes.

According to the police, this all started in June last year when the woman who is living a retired life received a bitcoins advertisement on her phone. She was hearing a lot about bitcoins these days and clicked the link out of curiosity. Soon she received a call from one Shiv who asked her if she interested to invest in it, the woman straight away said that she doesn't have the money however since then he started calling her almost daily asking her to invest.

He told the woman to invest $200 initially and assured that with his plan of scheme she could limit her losses. Finally In December she invested ₹15, 000. The very next day she received a call from one Nikita this time, who claimed that he was a manager at an investment firm and assured the victim that she could check her investment on company's website.

Since December Nikita would called the victim daily and made her invest different amounts by showing her different portfolios, in couple of days the woman eneded up investing ₹16 lakh in purported schemes, said police.

Later on the pretext of investing into bitcoins Nikita made the victim to invest 20 lakhs more, stated in the First Information Report. In just three months the woman invested almost ₹36 lakh.

Later Nikita called her and informed that due to Ukraine Russia conflict all her money has been lost and to retrieve her money she had been asked to invest $5000 (approximately ₹3.80 lakh) more. This time though the woman felt something was not right and did not invest anything. On Thursday she finally approached the Khar police and lodged her complaint.

"We have registered a cheating case along with Information Technology act sections 66C (punishment for identity theft) and 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resources) and our investigation is underway said an officer from Khar police station.

Published on: Saturday, April 02, 2022, 10:31 PM IST