Mumbai: A 65-year-old man has fallen prey to scammers who induced him to invest in the stock market and duped him to the tune of over Rs 53 lakh. Interestingly, the scammers told the investors to donate 20% of their profits to charity through them.
About The Fraud
According to police, the victim is a resident of Jalna and is a retired government servant. On June 10, the victim received a WhatsApp message from an unknown person asking if he was interested in stock market investment. The scammer then made a bogus claim about a scheme wherein selected few investors could make a profit of 2,000%.
The scammer told the victim that after earning profits, investors must donate 20% of their profits to them for charity purposes. He also shared a bogus SEBI document with him. The scammer then asked the victim to register a primary market trading account and then got the victim’s mobile number added to a WhatsApp group. In the group, information about the stock market and tips were being shared.
On June 18, one of the scammers sent a WhatsApp link to the victim and asked him to download an app through that link. Thereafter, from June 18 till July 31, the victim ended up investing Rs 53 lakh in 21 online transactions. Later when the victim did not receive any returns and the scammers stopped responding to his queries, he realised that he had been cheated. The victim then approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter. The victim has provided details of the contact numbers of the scammers and transaction details with the police in his complaint.
