Mumbai: A 30-year-old man has fallen prey to a fraud wherein scammers promised him lucrative returns on gold trading and duped him to the tune of ₹28.35 lakh in 28 transactions.
According to the police, the victim is a resident of Nerul. On October 18, he got added to a WhatsApp group related to online gold trading. In the group, the victim came across information about a company that deals in cryptocurrency and gold.
How the victim fell for the trap
The victim decided to trade through the company and registered on the website provided by the group. He began trading and could see the profits and earnings on the website. Later the website showed his investments in losses. He then checked with the scammers, who told him that the said loss was due to a data leak.
Scammers lured the victim into paying more money
After making some more investments, the victim checked on the website, which showed his earnings as ₹65 lakh after a few days of trading. Later, on the pretext of getting his returns, the scammers induced the victim to pay more and more money. From October 24 to November 17, the victim ended up paying ₹28.35 lakh to the scammers. Later they stopped responding to the queries of the victim.
Later the victim realised that he had been duped and approached the police. A case was registered last week under Sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using genuine a forged) of the Indian Penal Code.
FPJ Cyber Secure | FPJ
