Mumbai, June 8: Trusting a stranger on Facebook proved costly for a 62-year-old man. The victim had received a friend request from an unknown person on Facebook.
The two began chatting regularly, after which the scammer informed the victim about a cryptocurrency trading platform and induced him to invest through that platform. The victim followed the instructions of the scammer and ended up losing his money.
Details of the scam
According to the police, the victim is a businessman and resides in Bhiwandi. On March 7, while checking his Facebook account, the victim came across a friend request from an unknown person.
After accepting the request, the two began chatting regularly. During a conversation on March 17, the scammer told the victim about a cryptocurrency trading app.
The scammer told the victim that if he traded through the said app, he would get good profit. The fraudster then sent a web link to the victim and asked him to download and install the app through that link.
On March 20, the victim invested Rs 13,000 and received Rs 25,000 on his trading app wallet in a couple of days. Trusting the trading platform, the victim decided to invest further.
Losses and fraudulent demands
The victim ended up investing around Rs 15 lakh in different beneficiary bank accounts in multiple online transactions. However, when the complainant tried to withdraw his earnings from the trading app, his requests were repeatedly denied. The scammers told the victim to pay an additional Rs 28 lakh as commission to get his earnings released, police said.
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Having realised that he had been duped, the victim complained on the cyber-crime website, following which a case was registered under Section 318 (cheating) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
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