Pune woman lost Rs 3 core after being lured by an Instagram ad
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Pune: A woman in Pune’s Mohammadwadi area approached police last week after she lost a staggering Rs 3 crore from her life savings to a fraudulent investment scheme advertised on Instagram, The Indian Express reported.
The woman in her late 50s was lured into the online share trading fraud after she came across an advertisement on Instagram which promised multifold returns in January this year.
She was added to a WhatsApp group after she clicked on the Instagram link and in the group she saw members discussing ‘how their ‘institutional accounts’ helped them earn huge profits on investments in equity.’
As she spent two months closely reading these message, she was offered a ‘seed amount’ of Rs 10,000 for investment, according to the report.
After transferring the amount to her account, she was directed to download and log on to a phone-based application.
Over the one month, she was kept informing about new investment possibilities in the stock market.
She went on to make large money transfers just as the phone-based app showed profits over six times to her ‘investments’.
Alongside, he was allowed to make bits of withdrawals amounting to a total of Rs 1 lakh.
The app on the phone showed profits of Rs 20.66 crore after she made 30 large transfers to 12 bank accounts totalling Rs 3.04 crore.
When she wanted to withdraw the money she was told to pay 30 per cent of the total profits as charity and 10 per cent as fees.
At which point, she felt she was cheated and approached the Cyber crime police station.
Only two weeks ago, another man based in Pune lost Rs 3.4 crore to fraudulent share trading. Of the money he lost, over Rs 2 crore he had sourced as loans from various banks.
A WhatsApp group named after a British financial major offering high returns on ‘block trade’ and ‘upper circuit trading’ lured him, according to the report.
The Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad police reported worrying numbers of online share trading fraud cases over the last five months, as per the report.