Cyber fraudsters duped a Kandivali based businessman of ₹11,25,500 by luring him to invest in Bitcoins. The fraudsters assured him of high returns and made him invest $15,090 into investment portals.
In May, the complainant received a WhatsApp message from an unknown person, identified as Abby, who told him that she had mistakenly saved the complainant's number as her friend's and struck a conversation with him. Few days later Abby claimed that she had profited $8,274 by investing into crypto currency and asked the complainant to do the same, following which she told to download crypto currency application and explained all the procedure of registration, the complainant transferred ₹20,000 in the account.
A few days later, Abby shared link of a trading application and asked the complainant to transfer money from the Bitcoin application. The complainant transferred $2,377 and next day he received 10 percent benefits in his application account. By end of June, the complainant ended up investing $8,738 in the account when he checked the account he found $27,500 in his accounts. However, when he tried to withdraw the amount he was asked to pay $5,500 as taxes. After consulting Abby he paid the amount.
Next time when he tried to withdrew they again asked him to pay. He was informed that he was late in paying the taxes by three days and asked him to pay another $2000 it was then he realised that he has been duped and approached the police.
On the basis of his complaint the North region cyber police have registered an offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) section for cheating by personation (419) and cheating (420) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) along with Information Technology (IT) act for cheating by personation using computer resources (66D).
