Mumbai: An insurance company executive is among three people arrested by cyber police recently for duping a govt auditor of Rs 46 lakh in an investment fraud. Two others held are beneficiaries whose bank accounts were used to receive defrauded sums. Police said there are eight complaints against the accused across the country.Police said the insurance executive had figured out a bunch of ATM kiosks that were not covered by surveillance cameras and used them to withdraw defrauded sums without getting detected. He would hand over commissions on-the-spot to the beneficiaries right outside the ATMs. The rest of the money was converted into cryptocurrencies.The complainant — a 48-year-old govt auditor, is from the western suburbs. He found his phone number being added to a WhatsApp group run by an online trading platform. The group admin, one Aaradhya Sharma, contacted him and assured him the platform was registered with SEBI. She sent him copies of SEBI registration certificate over WhatsApp. Thereafter, the complainant was sent a link for downloading a trading app. A login was created using the auditor’s Pan number and Sharma encouraged him to make investments in the share market through the app. He was promised windfall gains.Initially, the app showed profits which the complainant was able to withdraw and was convinced of the app’s authenticity. He continued investing and paid up Rs 45.72 lakh in total. The app eventually showed Rs 1.45 crore in profits but he was unable to withdraw the money. The complainant contacted Sharma who discouraged him from making withdrawals saying he would run into losses and suggested he wait for 10 days. The complainant realised that the platform as well as the app was bogus. On May 31, West Region Cyber Police registered an FIR and nabbed the two beneficiaries, both Malwani residents, and the insurance executives after that.
