Pune entrepreneur loses Rs 1.86 crore in share fraud, was made to believe his gains to be Rs 54 crore

Subsequently when one of the administrators sent him a personal message and asked him to join a phone based application, the complainant immediately joined. The complainant was asked to register on this phoney stock trading application by submitting his details. The complainant started making ‘investments’ in this fake application based on the instructions he was receiving by the group administrators. He was asked to send all these amounts to multiple mule accounts registered at Chennai, Delhi, Darjeeling, Solan in Himachal Pradesh, Coimbatore, Surat, Howrah in West Bengal among others.

Every transaction was getting reflected on the phoney trading application with the corresponding profit. At the end of 20 days, against the ‘investment’ of Rs 1.86 crore, the fake app was showing gains of Rs 54 crores. When the complainant tried to withdraw some of the amount, he was asked to pay 20 per cent of the total gains as ‘service charges’. It was at this point that he realised that he had been cheated and approached the Cyber crime police station with a complaint.

For more than a year now, the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad police have reported what their cyber investigators are calling an epidemic, a worrying surge in online share trading fraud cases.

Fraudsters employ a variety of baits, including trading tips, virtual lectures, mobile applications, and enticing promises of exorbitant returns. Officials have also expressed concerns over citizens continuing to fall prey to these scams in spite of several advisories, sensitization campaigns and wide media coverage in this regard. In 2024, the Pune police registered as many 128 cases of share trading fraud in which cheating amount was more than Rs 50 lakh. The number does not include hundreds more in which amounts less than Rs 50 lakh were swindled. In these 128 cases alone, citizens have lost Rs 143 crore.

In an advisory issued in this regard last year, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said, “Fraudsters are enticing victims through online trading courses, seminars, and mentorship programs in the stock market, leveraging social media platforms… Posing as employees or affiliates of SEBI-registered Foreign Portfolio Investors, they coax individuals into downloading applications that purportedly allow them to purchase shares, subscribe to IPOs without the need for an official trading or Demat account…”