A 37-year-old information technology employee from Hadapsar allegedly lost Rs 66.15 lakh after cyber fraudsters drew him into fake stock-trading and investment groups on WhatsApp and Telegram, Pune City Cyber Police said in an FIR reported by The Indian Express.
The complainant made 67 transactions over several weeks in August and September, transferring money from his account and his wife’s account to 38 mule accounts, according to the report. The fraud came to light when he tried to withdraw an amount displayed as accumulated profits on the platform.
The administrators then demanded an additional Rs 9 lakh as an exchange fee before the funds could be released. This led the complainant to suspect that the profits shown on the platform were fictitious. He subsequently approached cybercrime authorities and filed complaints through the national cybercrime reporting portal before the Pune City Cyber Police registered an FIR.
The victim was initially added to a WhatsApp group with more than 700 members on August 19. The group administrator, who introduced herself as a company manager, shared information about share trading and directed him to a Telegram group with more than 4,000 members. He was later moved to another Telegram group where administrators assigned him a series of tasks.
The first tasks involved opening links, taking screenshots of images and posting them in the group. The fraudsters later asked him to invest money, beginning with amounts between Rs 1,000 and Rs 10,000. Police officers investigating the case said the early transactions were deliberately kept small, and the victim was allowed to withdraw limited amounts described as profits.
On an initial investment of around Rs 1,000, the victim was promised a 40 per cent return. After completing the transaction, he received Rs 1,403 in his bank account. The small withdrawals helped establish confidence in the platform before the fraudsters encouraged larger transfers.
The complainant subsequently sent money through UPI, IMPS and RTGS. The platform displayed an accumulated balance of nearly Rs 79.82 lakh, described as his investment and profits, even though the amount could not be withdrawn without the additional fee. The FIR records the total amount transferred as Rs 66.15 lakh.
The case highlights how online investment fraud can combine social-media groups, staged returns and multiple bank accounts to make an operation appear legitimate. The Pune police investigation will now focus on the identities of the group administrators, the mule accounts used to receive the money and the movement of the transferred funds. The FIR follows the victim’s complaints to cybercrime authorities and the national cybercrime reporting portal.
