Two techies from Bengaluru duped of ₹2.2 crore in investment scams

Two techies from the city were duped of ₹2.2 crore in total by cyber fraudters in investment scams. Cybercrime police are now probing both cases and trying to track down the accused by following the money trail.

In the first case, 31-year-old Tanmay Mukherjee, a software engineer from Whitefield, lost ₹1.31 crore when he started investing money in the stock market through an app, which he reportedly downloaded through a link sent to him from an unknown number. Initially, Tanmay invested ₹50,000 through the app and made a decent profit within hours on June 28. Following this, he invested all his savings amounting to ₹1.31 crore. However, when he tried to withdraw the money later, he was asked to invest more to be able to do so. Realising that he had been duped, Tanmay approached the police and filed a complaint on Monday.

In a seperate incident, a 36-year-old software engineer from D.J. Halli was defrauded of ₹91 lakh. In his complaint, the victim said that on July 16, he recieved a job offer through a message on his Telegram account, through which he could earn ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 per day. Accepting the offer, the victim contacted a person identified as Dhanya from Chennai, who asked him to review hotels in exchange for a remuneration in the form of commissions.

The victim was then added to a Whatsapp group through which he came across people investing money and earning profit on the same day. As the victim contemplated doing the same, the accused lured him with an offer of an anniversary bonus for an investment of ₹1 lakh with an assured return of ₹1.5 lakh. He followed the procedure and earned ₹2 lakh. Following this, he started investing more by borrowing money from his wife and mother to the tune of ₹91 lakh.

The fraud came to light when the victim failed to withdraw the amount even after repeated attempts, and the accused advised him to invest more in order to get back the money. The victim filed a complaint with the police on Tuesday.