Pune: An automobile engineer (45) registered a complaint with the Pimpri Chinchwad cybercrime police, stating that online fraudsters duped him of Rs 2.1 crore after promising handsome returns on his investments in online share-trading between July 9 and Sept 9.According to the cybercrime police, the engineer works with a prominent company in the Pimpri Chinchwad area. He approached the police earlier this week with his complaint application and after verifying the application, a formal FIR was registered by the police on Friday.The police said the victim’s cellphone number was added to a group on a messaging application where all the group members were already discussing substantial returns from trading shares online.Following this, the victim became curious and contacted the group admin, who then sent him a link to an online share trading application.Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Shivaji Pawar told TOI, “The victim downloaded the application via the link, which can be manipulated from the other end. The suspects shared nine different bank accounts with the victim on the messaging application. The victim started transferring money to the fraudsters in those accounts.”“The suspects claimed that they were purchasing shares for the victim after receiving the money. The online application also showed his investment and the profit earned on these shares,” he said. Pawar added, “Within a few days, the victim saw a profit of Rs 6.94 crore on the application.”“When the victim decided to sell the shares for profit, the suspects demanded Rs 1.22 crore as fees, Rs 48.58 lakh as capital gains tax and a short-term capital gains tax of Rs 34.70 lakh. In this way, the victim continued transferring more money to the suspects,” he said.“In total, the victim transferred Rs 2.1 crore to nine different bank accounts of the suspects, hoping to receive the profit of Rs 6.94 crore,” he said.
