Greater Noida: Police help man recover ₹14 lakh lost in online fraud
The man got trapped in March after joining a group via a WhatsApp message that claimed to teach “tips and tricks” in share market trading
Greater Noida: A 31-year-old man who was allegedly duped of ₹14 lakh in an online share trading fraud has got the entire money back after two months, courtesy cyber cell team of Greater Noida police, officers said on Saturday.
According to complainant Ankit Kumar, a resident of Rabupura village, Greater Noida, he filed a police complaint on May 16 at the Rabupura police station. He got trapped in March after joining a group via a WhatsApp message that claimed to teach “tips and tricks” in share market trading.
“When I joined, there were around 150 other people in the group. The administrator of the group shared a link to download a mobile application. We were told to ‘buy shares’ through it to get multifold returns,” said Kumar.
Kumar, who runs a business in Greater Noida, observed for a month how others were investing and getting manifold returns.
“To invest, we were supposed to send money to a particular bank account shown on the application. In April, I invested in three installments of ₹5 lakh, ₹5 lakh and ₹4 lakh. The application would show that my ₹14 lakh turned into ₹50 lakh. In the first week of May, when I wanted to withdraw the amount, the group administrator told me that I could do so only if I invested another ₹10 lakh. It made me suspicious. On inspecting the scheme online, it was found to be completely fraudulent,” he said.
Kumar filed a complaint at the cybercrime’s government portal, and on May 16 submitted a complaint at the Rabupura police station.
“An FIR was registered at the Rabupura police station under relevant sections of the IT Act and police teams were deployed to investigate the matter,” said Ashok Kumar, additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP), Greater Noida.
“The team started investigating and took all the details of the bank account where I had transferred the money – my life’s savings. I did not expect that the money would ever return,” said complainant Kumar.
However, the cybercrime team was able to recover it.
“During investigation, it was found that the defrauded money had been transferred to three different bank accounts by fraudsters,” said the ADCP.
By tracing bank accounts, the officers procured a court order to freeze the accounts where the defrauded money had been transferred to, and got a release order for the same, he informed.
“On Friday, the full amount of ₹14 lakh was returned to the complainant’s bank account,” said the officer.