A 44-year-old girl from Andheri fell prey to a web-based buying and selling commercial and was duped by a cyber fraud gang of Rs 15.5 lakh. The girl final week filed a criticism with the Mumbai police.
In January final 12 months, she got here throughout an commercial a couple of inventory buying and selling workshop of a non-public firm on Facebook beneath the title ‘Inventory Market Investor Alliance’.
To register for this workshop, she uploaded her info on the given hyperlink. Inside hours, she was added to a WhatsApp group. She was knowledgeable in regards to the workshop by the group’s admin, Anaya Reddy, who mentioned that she was the official consultant of the corporate. Workshops had been organised thrice per week.
In the meantime, Reddy despatched her one other hyperlink, asking her to open her personal consumer account. The corporate would supply completely different financial institution accounts to allocate the quantity for funding. After the quantity is deposited, she could be supplied with details about the funding, she was advised.
After that, Reddy, together with two of her different associates, persuaded her to deposit cash as investments in numerous financial institution accounts. Reddy inspired her to shortly deposit the cash, saying that she would get good returns on this funding, the FIR mentioned.
Trusting them, the complainant had invested Rs 4.5 lakhs. Later, she might see on the mentioned firm’s on-line platform that she had made round Rs 8 lakh from the investments. And a tax of Rs 9,705 was additionally deducted from it, prompting her to belief the funding scheme, the police criticism mentioned.
Reddy took benefit of this. On her recommendation, the complainant invested extra money in on-line buying and selling. After just a few days, she utilized for the withdrawal of the cash from her digital accounts. She acquired Rs 3.39 lakh after the tax deduction. As she was getting returns on funding, she trusted the system and invested extra.
Following the directions, between November 15, 2023, and January 24, 2024, she invested Rs 15.53 lakh in numerous on-line buying and selling.
Nonetheless, later, she was unable to entry the ‘revenue’ cash together with the principal funding.
When she rigorously requested Reddy and her two colleagues, Arjun Sharma and Sameer Malhotra, to launch all her cash, they requested her to pay a tax quantity or else she wouldn’t get the cash.
That is when the complainant realised that she was being conned.
She then filed a criticism with the police. Primarily based on the lady’s criticism, the cyber police have registered a case towards the three WhatsApp group admins, Anaya Reddy, Arjun Sharma, and Sameer Malhotra, and began on the lookout for the accused cyber fraudsters.
The investigators suspect that the gang might have duped many similarly. The police have written to service suppliers and banks, in search of particulars of the cellphone numbers, social media accounts, and financial institution accounts used within the fraud, mentioned a police officer.
Owing to a rise in comparable frauds, Mumbai cyber police just lately printed an consciousness video on their social media platforms urging folks to to not fall prey to such frauds.