It has been revealed that two people from Mumbai were cheated of lakhs of rupees by promising double profits on their investments in the stock market. In both the cases, WhatsApp was used to carry out fraud. Mumbai West Cyber Department has registered two separate cases in this case.
WhatsApp is the most popular among smartphone users. Fraudulent activities using this app are on the rise. Citizens are invited to various WhatsApp groups and invited to join them. In that WhatsApp group, people are forced to invest by telling them how investing in the stock market can yield huge profits in a short period of time. However, after investing, they are financially cheated. Two incidents of such fraud have taken place in Mumbai.
The first incident involved a family in Andheri. Cybercriminals recruited the 43-year-old complainant into a WhatsApp group called ‘Fairs Excel Ensemble’ on April 8. They were told that the company Fairs Excel Ensemble was SEBI registered and a fake certificate was also sent to the group. This gave the complainants confidence in the company.
A person named Mehul Goyal claimed that investing in the stock market in that group would yield huge financial gains. The plaintiff then decided to invest. For this, he also included his wife, brother and sister-in-law in that group. After that, a woman named Sharon Trivedi sent him a link to invest. Through that link, the complainant downloaded an app and invested 48 lakh 33 thousand rupees. They were shown to have made a profit of INR 2.26 crore on this investment. Of this, the plaintiffs tried to withdraw INR 4 lakh. However, they were unable to withdraw it. At that time, Mehul Goyal and Sharon Trivedi made the excuse that they would have to withdraw the money after a few days or else they would have to pay taxes.
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However, later, when the two broke off contact, the plaintiffs realized that they had been cheated. The plaintiffs were cheated of INR 48 lakh between April 8 and May 28.
In another incident, a 60-year-old complainant from Andheri was similarly duped of INR 10 lakh. He was included in a WhatsApp group called '11 Special Training Team A'. There, a person named Pankaj Verma was guiding them on how to get benefits from investing in the stock market every day.
Seeing this, the plaintiff decided to invest in the stock market. Then a woman named Divya Bhat asked the complainants to download an app called ‘Active Alpha’. The plaintiff linked their Aadhaar card and bank account to update their KYC for investment on that app and invested 10 lakh 25 thousand rupees between February 6 and April 4. However, he did not receive any amount. After this, he realized that they had been financially cheated.
In both these cases, cases have been registered under Section 66(d) of the Information Technology Act, 318(4), 319(2), 336(2), 336(3), 338, 340(2), 61(2) of the Indian Penal Code in the West Division of the Mumbai Cyber Police.
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