The police have registered a criminal case against two persons for allegedly duping a 65-year-old man to the tune of Rs 47.50 lakh on the pretext of promising him lucrative returns on stock trading. Interestingly, one of the accused claimed to be a share market wizard and would also impart training on stock training by conducting webinars.
According to the police, the complainant is a resident of Wagale Estate in Thane. In December last year, the victim while surfing on Facebook came across an advertisement on share market investment training and investment program by one Kunal Singh.
The advertisement also claimed that the investors can earn 300 percent profit in two to three months of investment.The victim decided to invest after which his number was added in a WhatsApp group which was being run by an associate of Singh. Singh, who claimed to be a stock market wizard used to share webinar links on the said WhatsApp group, in which there were around 50 members. In the said webinars, Singh used to impart knowledge on buying and selling of stocks.
The victim then began investing his money through the guidance provided by Singh and from January 11 till February 16, the victim ended up investing Rs 47.50 lakh. The victim was being asked to invest more money to earn bigger profits. However, the victim showed his unwillingness to invest further, police said.
On February 17, the accused informed in the WhatsApp group that the investors can withdraw their money after two days since they were closing their investment program. However, when the victim requested the accused to process withdrawal of his money, the accused asked him to pay more money on the pretext of taxes.
Later the accused persons stopped communicating with the victim after which the latter realised that he had been duped. He then approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter on Monday. The police have registered a case under sections 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
