A 50-year-old businessman stationed out of Bengaluru lost a staggering sum of Rs 6.6 crore to fraudsters. The latter communicated with him on WhatsApp and lured him giving a promise on high returns via online stock trading.
As per the complaint filed by Mohit Goel, who is the resident of Shanthi Nagar, with Central CEN Crime police, he lost the money in the time interval between Sept 8 and Oct 23. According to the Police, Goel’s incident is perhaps the largest sum of money that was lost in online stock market investment scams in the city, till date.
To speak of the scenario, Goel had received a message from 8146030409 on Sept 8 with respect to the trading, wherein, he was added to a group initially. Once added in the group, the fraudsters were discussing the profit they were making by investing in the stock market through an app named "ECAUSE-WAY".
For a while, Goel kept noticing the messages in the group, where fraudsters were actually utilizing different numbers and posting messages about the huge profits they had made against their investment. As per a senior police officer, these fraudsters also shared fake screenshots of the amount that were being credited to their bank accounts.
Furthermore, the fraudsters had also shared links to online classes so as to help users learn how to trade and make a profit; thereby making it feel like fraudsters were genuine. The officer further added that he joined the online classes to understand how it works and then decided to invest.
After downloading the app, Goel started investing amounts in thousands. Initially, the fraudsters gave the returns and credited the money to his bank account. Due to this, Goel got carried away and started making enquiries on higher investments. Thereafter, the fraudsters then again added him to another WhatsApp group on the 9th of September. Here, they messaged him from different numbers which included 9147789788, 9947402283, 9238036753, 9887378043, 9931647239, and 8972086636 so as to convince him to make more investments. Feeling that it was genuine, given his past successful transactions, he invested around INR 6.6 crore by transferring money from his bank account across 14 different accounts on multiple occasions.
Then, these miscreants were displaying the profit against his investment. However, things took a dark turn when he tried to withdraw the money, as he was not able to do so. Not stopping there, the fraudsters then informed him that he needed to again make a payment of a few more lakhs, citing additional charges which included tax and processing fee, among others. This was when Goel suspected something fishy was going about. He realized the gravity of the situation when he was certain that he got cheated by these fraudsters.
Goel contacted the cyber helpline, and lodged a complaint on Oct 24. Currently, a case has been registered under the Information Technology Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), sections 316 (criminal breach of trust) and 318 (cheating). The officer highlighted, "We are working on freezing the amount from the fraudsters' accounts, but the amount seems to have been moved away to other mule accounts."
