A 40-year-old man who works as a regional manager in a private company has fallen prey to scammers and lost Rs 2 crore in a span of one month who promised him lucrative returns on investment in stock trading. Interestingly, the said bogus trading app also had a customer support feature wherein the scammer would respond to the queries of the victim to make the victims believe that the app was genuine.
According to the police, the victim is a resident of Thane. On December 21, last year, the victim received a message from a woman who claimed to be associated with a business school and enquired if the victim was interested in share trading. After the victim showed his interest, he was then added to a WhatsApp group in which two persons identified only as Jay and Aashiya were admins.
On December 26, the scammers then shared a link with the victim and asked him to download a trading app through the said link. The victim followed the instructions after which he kept receiving share trading related messages on his WhatsApp group. Over the period of one month, the victim kept trading through the said fraudulent app and from January 04 till February 02, he ended up investing Rs 2 crore to the scammers.
Interestingly, the said bogus trading app also had a customer support feature wherein the scammer would respond to the queries of the victim and the victim could also see his earnings of Rs 4.51 crore in the app, police said. However, when the victim requested on the app for withdrawal of Rs 1.40 crore, his request was turned down and was asked to pay Rs 23.51 lakh to withdraw the said amount.
The victim's request to return his Rs 2 crore invested money was also turned down, after which he realised that he had been duped. He then approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter on Monday. The victim has provided details of the mobile numbers, fraudulent link, trading app details and beneficiary account details to the police in his complaint.
The police have registered a case under sections 66C (punishment for identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
