Mumbai Cyber Safe: Lured by high returns, 23-year-old from Mulund duped of ₹5.93 lakh

A 23-year-old man lost ₹5.93 lakh to a cyber fraudster who promised lucrative returns on investment and even credited a petty amount initially to gain the trust of the aggrieved.

In his police complaint, the Mulund resident said that it was January 15 when he was surfing the internet about work from home opportunities and came across a link which led him to the portal of an advertising and marketing company. The firm offered high returns on investments and the man started off with paying Rs200. Subsequently, he got a link to download an application which would show his profit. He was even given the option of transferring his earnings to his bank account via the application.

Victim paid ₹5.93 lakh via 26 UPI transactions

Next, he started getting Rs10 in the application's wallet everyday, which he used to withdraw and transfer in his account. In February, the aggrieved again invested Rs800, after which he started getting Rs42 daily. He was then induced by the fraudster to invest a bigger amount and he ended up paying nearly Rs5.93 lakh via 26 UPI transactions. However, in April, when the complainant decided to withdraw his earnings, he could not do so. He then confronted the fraudster, who assured that the money would get credited in his account. On April 5, the fraudster went incommunicado and the application became dysfunctional.

Having realised that he had been duped, the man approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter on Monday. A case has been registered under section 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 419 (cheating by personation), 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.

Mumbai Cyber Safe:

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