64-year-old ex-banker loses

MUMBAI: A 64-year-old retired banker from Dahisar is the latest in a line of victims falling prey to online investment fraudsters. She lost ₹1.57 crore to fake promises of high returns. She contacted the police when she could not withdraw any sum from the purported profits in the account that she had created with the fake investment firm.
Police said that the complainant retired from the Punjab National Bank. The fraud started when she was added randomly to a WhatsApp group where members discussed about share market investments all the time. Lured with high returns in short periods, she ended up investing ₹1.57 crore. Though her virtual account showed ₹6.5 crore credit balance, she was not able to withdraw a penny when she wanted to. She then approached the police, and a case was registered in North Cyber police station.
On June 17, a stranger added her to a WhatsApp group, ‘H-4 Goldman Sachs Investment management’, which had 179 members, including two admins – Lydia Sharma and Rahul Kapur. She noticed tips on investment in shares being shared freely in the group. Members also posted how much profit they earned.
Rahul Kapur, who was shown as VPO of a firm, was giving assurance of 5 to 20 percent profit in stock trading in a short period.
Lured by the high margins of profit they were promising, the complainant opened a share trading account through a link that was shared to her by the group admins. She registered her account by giving details of her Aadhaar card, PAN card, Gmail ID, and cheque book’s scan copy.
She was then added to another group ‘VIP-70’ and Lydia Sharma started advising her to buy stocks of different companies every day. Sharma also gave her bank accounts numbers in the names of unknown persons and companies for her to pay. The complainant could see the money earned by her in her virtual account and also on the group’s website. It showed that she was getting 10 percent profit on her investments.
On July 18, when she tried to withdraw ₹5 lakh from her virtual account, she could not do so, and Lydia Sharma started giving vague excuses. The complainant then realised that she was cheated of ₹1.57 crore. She called cyber helpline number 1930 on July 22 and reported the matter to the North Cyber police station. The police registered a case against five unknown persons under several sections of the BNS as well as IT Act, a police officer said.