It was a scam akin to Russian Matryoshka dolls, where one lie hid another.
The con began with fake investors, then expanded to fake apps where people were urged to invest in fake stocks for high returns, only to find that they had been stripped of their life savings. A woman from Faridabad was cheated of over Rs 7 crore, a businessman from Noida of Rs 9 crore, a doctor from Punjab’s Bhatinda of Rs 6 crore, and they were only some of the victims.
Officials from the Enforcement Directorate, which has arrested five people in connection with the scam and got their custody for six days, said a “syndicate” was behind the con and also funnelled the money abroad by converting it into cryptocurrency.
The scamsters would post ads on social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and X and try and lure people in by promising absurdly high returns.
This is exactly what happened to a woman in Faridabad, who came across an ad on Facebook promising big returns from investments in the stock market. After clicking on the link, she was added to a WhatsApp group where she kept seeing success stories posted by other investors, who were actually members of the cyber fraud gang. The name of the group also had the name of a prominent bank in it to lend it legitimacy.
Encouraged by all of this, she agreed to join another group and was instructed by the administrator to install an app called “IC Organ Max”, through which she “invested” Rs 61 lakh. She was then told to install another app named “Techstars.shop”. The apps had the names of popular stocks, futures, options and other investment instruments for victims to put their money in.
“To build further trust, the victim might initially be shown to have got good returns, but in fact they are just numbers shown on these fake apps. While the victims invest more funds, they gradually realise that they are unable to withdraw their funds. When they try to take out their money, the scammer asks the victims to pay statutory taxes, brokerage fees, etc. which are nothing but ways to extract even more money,” said an official
“Once the scammers believe that they have extracted as much money as possible, they cut off all communication and disappear,” the official added.
The woman from Faridabad had lost Rs 7.59 crore before she realised she was being conned. The gang also cheated a Noida businessman of Rs 9.09 crore and a Bhatinda doctor of Rs 5.93 crore using the same method.
The official said that, apart from the arrests, the Enforcement Directorate conducted searches at multiple locations and traced proceeds of crime worth over Rs 25 crore. The money was routed using “mule” bank accounts, which were also rented using chat apps. Transactions under Rs 5 lakh were made in the accounts to avoid raising suspicion and the money was converted into cryptocurrency to be managed from overseas.