Investment scammers dupe Indian trader out of $52,000

An Indian trader has lost more than $52,000 (Rs. 31 lakh) to investment scammers after he was lured with mouth-watering profits. The 54-year-old trader dealing in building materials in Sola lodged an official complaint with the city cybercrime police after discovering he had been swindled out of his funds.

According to the Indian trader, the criminals promised him, alongside other investors, high returns through an investment program that was backed by digital assets. However, he claimed that the website was a fake and the crypto investment did not exist.

These kinds of scams have been up this year across India, with bad actors taking advantage of lax crypto regulations and the ignorance of the majority of the population to scam them out of their hard-earned money.

Indian trader loses funds to fake investment scammers

In the FIR that he submitted to the police, the Indian trader mentioned that the criminals targeted him on Facebook. He claimed they sent him a friend request, using the profile of a woman who identified herself as Aradhya Thakur on April 6.

After he accepted the request, the pair started chatting and things soon became serious between them that they moved their conversation to WhatsApp. It was after they moved their conversation to WhatsApp that she struck.

The Indian trader mentioned that the woman claimed to work for a company involved in dollar-based investments, persuading him to invest in the scheme. The trader claimed that the website she urged him to look into was similar to that of a reputable crypto trading platform, CoinEx, so he didn’t have any doubts about the investment. In addition, he claimed they promised great returns. “She told me I would get 10% profit on my investment and helped me open an account on the site,” he said.

He claimed that she initially sent Rs 9,900 ($112) into his account as profit, a ploy that he now sees as a move to win his confidence and make him invest more. The trader then claimed that he subsequently made a series of transactions between April 24 and May 8 into various bank accounts shared by the woman and her customer care representatives. The Indian trader claimed he transferred a total of Rs. 31 lakh in multiple transactions.

Police begin investigation into the case

The trader mentioned that his profile on the website showed his exact balance at the time, a move that further boosted his confidence in the scheme. However, problems started to arise after he tried to withdraw some of his funds, and he was asked to invest more before making any withdrawal. The complainant claimed that after a series of trials without success, he went online to check public perception of the investment, and discovered that he had been using a cloned version of the official CoinEx platform.

The trader mentioned that he saw a message that specifically mentioned that the platform was not the “CoinEx official channel.” Upon realizing that he had been scammed, he contacted the cybercrime helpline and was later asked to come in to file an official complaint, attaching bank statements and transaction proofs. Indian police claimed that investigations have started, and they are trying to trace the accused and other operators behind the fraudulent investment website.

The cybercrime police mentioned that the case was registered under criminal conspiracy, cheating, and breach of trust under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with the charges of the Information Technology Act against an unknown accused. Meanwhile, there have been calls across India urging the government to set up regulations and frameworks that will guide the crypto industry. They are also championing for better measures in place to protect against criminals in the industry.

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