Two Bengaluru residents lose Rs 95 lakh to cyber fraudsters

Bengaluru: Two people have complained to the police here that they have collectively lost about Rs 95 lakh to cyber fraudsters after they fell prey to fake videos allegedly featuring two top businessmen.

In both the cases, the complainants didn’t check the authenticity of the alleged videos and ended up clicking some suspicious links which led them to fake websites created by fraudsters to cheat people and make money on promises of giving them higher returns, they said on Monday.

“As per the complainants, only after investing in these social media platforms they realised that the alleged videos featuring Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani were used to get them to suspicious links and without any due diligence on their part, they ended up investing only to realise that they were cheating using fake videos of such personalities,” a senior police officer said.

In the first case, a resident of Banashankari here came across a video promoting a trading platform promising high returns on investments, police said.

According to the woman, she clicked the link on some suspicious looking website and shared her details with the alleged platform. Later, she received a call from the an unidentified man, claiming to be an agent associated with the alleged platform convincing her to make investments for higher returns.

Initially, she invested around Rs 1.4 lakh and got returns of Rs 8,000 and when she invested Rs 6.7 lakh from the second time, she did not get any returns and lost the invested amount as well, a senior police officer said.

In a similar manner, she also got cheated of Rs 67 lakh with another platform, police said.

In the second case, a retired employee fell victim to a video on a social media platform promoting a trading platform promising higher returns on investments, the officer said.

He lost Rs 19 lakh after he transferred the amount to two different bank accounts shared by the alleged fraudsters. But once the amount was transferred, he did not get any response, he said.

“It could also be so that the fraudsters must have used videos of these personalities which was meant for their general body meetings or for stakeholders and misused the same to cheat gullible people. Trusting the alleged videos, they landed in trouble by clicking on such fake websites created by fraudsters to trap gullible people,” the officer said.

Two separate cases have been registered at CEN (Cyber Economic and Narcotics) South police station and an investigation is underway to track the culprits involved in the scam, police said.