Mumbai: The scammers are using newer ways to target citizens, trap them in fraudulent investment schemes and induce them to make heavy investments in the scheme. In a recent case, a 50-year-old man had met a woman on a matchmaking application. The said woman then began chatting with the victim regularly and gained his trust. She then told the victim about having got huge profits in forex trading. The victim believed his newly made friend and ended up losing over Rs 32 lakh.
According to the police, the victim is a resident of Thane. In April this year, the victim was befriended by a woman on a matchmaking app. The two then began chatting and speaking over the calls regularly and during one of their conversations, the accused woman informed the victim about forex trading and how she earned huge profits through investing in the same. She also shared a link with the victim over WhatsApp and asked him to register and began trading through that link.
From then till July 03, the victim ended up investing Rs 32.59 lakh in multiple online transactions. However, when the victim's requests to withdraw the money from the bogus trading app kept denying and when the victim's social media friend stopped communicating with him, the latter realised that he had been duped. He then approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter, police said.
The victim has provided details of the scammer, her contact details, bogus web link details and transaction details to the police in his complaint. A case has been registered by the Thane police under section 318 (cheating) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act and the police have launched a probe in the matter.
