Pune researcher loses Rs 2.1 crore including funds from property sale, loans to cyber fraudsters

Officials said that this was arguably one of biggest online frauds registered in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad in the recent past.

A First Information Report in the case was registered at Wakad police station on Saturday by the 45-year-old man who works for the statistics wing of a clinical research firm operating in India. The FIR stated that because he was working from home earlier this year, he had begun investing in share markets.

In the last week of November, he saw an advertisement on a social media website. The ad was for a share market investment platform which had the name of a renowned venture capital fund headquartered in the US. The advertisement offered online tutorials in share market investment and also promised to build good investment portfolios.

After he clicked on the link given in the ad, he was added to a WhatsApp group. In the chats of this group, he was given links to some online tutorials and other administrators of the group encouraged members to invest through the platform.

For the investment, the victim was asked to download a phone based application. Subsequently, the victim was asked to make large investments by making payments on the app. The investments and returns were reflected on this app. On one occasion, he was allowed to transfer Rs three lakh from the platform to his account after which he started trusting the application and the platform. Over the period of a couple of weeks, he transferred a total of Rs 2.15 crores to the platform which comprised proceeds of a property sale and multiple loans totalling Rs 70 lakh which he had secured solely for the purpose of investment. At one point, the total of money transfers the victim had made to the platform was Rs 2.15 crore.

At this point, according to the complaint, administrators of the group told him that he will have to invest Rs 4.33 crore into the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of an oil company. When the victim said he could not invest that high an amount, he was told that all his previous investments had been frozen. He then started calling all the numbers which he interacted with on the WhatsApp group. He realised that not once had these individuals had talked to him over the phone and all the communication was in text chats.

He dug deeper and got more information about the name of the company and found that it was a venture capital fund which had nothing to do with share market investments. After realising that he had been cheated by cyber fraudsters, he approached the police with a complaint. Officials said that the Cyber fraudster had created social media profiles of the names they used to communicate with the victim thus making him believe in the fraud.

Senior Inspector Ganesh Jawadwad, in-charge of Wakad police station who is probing the case said, “The phone based application for online investment, the name of the company, the name of the people used to communicate with the victim, all turned out to be fake. By the time he realised he had been cheated, the victim had transferred Rs 2.15 crore in half a dozen transactions. A probe has been launched into the bank accounts and cell phones used by the online fraudsters.”

Probe has revealed that the fraudulent accounts are located in Mumbai, Delhi, Telangana, Noida and Rajasthan. “The Cyber criminals seem to have used a network of rented fraudulent accounts to siphon the money swindled from the victim.” said an officer who is part of the probe.