Hyderabad: Software professionals and high-salaried private employees are new targets of fraudsters who are luring them into investment in stock markets and cryptocurrency and looting the professionals.
The targeted people are losing lakhs of rupees in a short period of time and the fraudsters are converting the money collected from them into cryptocurrency within 24 hours to escape the 1093 cyber crime stopper procedure that stops the transfer/ withdrawal of money.
A software engineer named Sandeep lost Rs. 23 lakhs in just one month.
He was added to an investment business group on the Telegram social media. Some members of that group took screenshots of their profits and Sandeep got greedy and in July and started investing Rs.5000. With a profit of Rs.10 thousand within an hour, he invested another Rs.23,500. As it appeared on the screen that he had made a profit of Rs.30,000, again he invested Rs.61,000 on the same day and another Rs.1.5 lakh on the next day.
Two days later, he invested Rs. 4 lakh at once as double the amount of his investment appeared on the screen. But, as there was no possibility to withdraw the profit after that, he called the number of his co-investor. When they said that they should invest another Rs.1 lakh, Sandeep made the investment. After six days, he invested Rs.10 lakh. In all, he invested a total of Rs.23 lakh and later realized that he was cheated as he was unable to withdraw the money and immediately filed a complaint with the police.
“In investment scams, the investors have no option to withdraw money. No matter how much you invest you will be cheated. So no one should hope for high profits and go after online businesses and investments,” an official of Hyderabad Cybercrime police station advised.
The highest number of cases reported in the city are about investment fraud in cryptocurrency and stock markets.
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