A 60-year-old senior citizen was cheated of Rs 11 lakh by persons posing to be stockbrokers from a US-based company on the pretext of investing in equities and withdrawing the returns. An FIR in the case has been filed by the 60-year-old resident of Nana Peth, who runs a small business. As per his complaint, in August last year, he was approached by a woman over the phone, who said she was speaking on behalf of a Chicago-based company and spoke about various options of investing in equities on the stock market. After he consented to invest, he received multiple calls from persons claiming to be stockbrokers from the company and had him transfer money for investing in equities. Once the complainant had made multiple transfers to different bank accounts on the pretext of investing, the purported company representatives claimed that his investments had yielded returns of over Rs 35 lakh and even paid him Rs 1.12 lakh. Subsequently, however, they took more money from him on different pretexts for withdrawing those returns. After a while, the persons stopped responding to the complainant's calls and gave him no further returns. Upon realising that he had been cheated, the complainant approached the cyber-crime cell of Pune police recently. The complainant ended up losing Rs 11.24 lakh to the alleged online fraudsters. Inspector Ulhas Kadam of Samarth police station, who is probing the case, said, "After preliminary verification of the complaint by the cyber crime cell, an FIR was registered at the police station. We have launched a probe into the legitimacy of the company name provided by the suspects and also the multiple bank accounts and phone numbers used by them."
