Man held for duping woman of Rs 1.70 lakh by luring her to invest in bogus schemes

A25-year-old man who holds an MBA degree was arrested for allegedly duping a woman of Rs 1.70 lakh by luring her to invest in bogus schemes, police said on Tuesday.

E-gift vouchers worth Rs 15 lakh were recovered from the possession of the accused, identified as Rajat Aggarwal, a resident of Sirsa in Haryana, they said.

Two mobile phones, details of two Google accounts and an Instagram account used in the cyber frauds by the accused were obtained for further investigation, police said.

The accused posed as a woman on Instagram and cheated people, they added.

The matter came to light in March after a case of cheating under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code was registered on the complaint of the woman in outer Delhi, police said.

The woman, in her complaint, alleged that an Instagram ID, ‘divya_garg_2’, contacted her with a scheme to ”double money” and later induced and cheated her of Rs 1,70,000.

The payments were made through the UPI mode in three transactions, police said.

After receiving the amount, the accused demanded a further Rs 1,12,000 on the pretext of taxes but the woman realised that she was a victim of cyber fraud, they said.

”With the help of technical surveillance, analysis of IP addresses and Call Detail Records of suspected mobile phone numbers, it was known that all the suspected IP addresses were connected with Aggarwal. A raid was conducted at Sirsa from where Aggarwal was arrested on March 29,” Sameer Sharma, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer), said.

During interrogation, Aggarwal disclosed that some years ago he was cheated of Rs 5,000 to get a verified account on Instagram. Later, he came across some Instagram accounts which targeted people on social media and cheated them by giving false promises of ”doubling” their money in a short span of time, the DCP said.

The accused contacted handlers of such accounts and worked for them by using fake Instagram IDs and in return, he was given a commission, Sharma said.

On the complaints of the victims, some of the bank accounts of these handlers were frozen. In March, Aggarwal again started promoting a fake scheme of “double money offer” through his fake Instagram ID ‘divya_garg_2’, which had close to 2,000 followers, he said.

He used to ask victims to deposit money in his bank account on the pretext of ”doubling” their money and urged them to purchase e-vouchers of leading portals and then send those e-vouchers directly to his email ID, the DCP added.

Police said an investigation is underway in the case to expose the nexus of other people involved in such cyber frauds.