Dr.Thomas (Sub-Editor)
A 36-year-old software engineer checking matrimonial site was cheated by prospective bride who offered to help him to earn quick money through online investment and escaped with ₹ 26 lakh within one and half month.
The victim,Karthikeyan Krishnaswamy,resident of Horamavu has filed a complaint with East Division Cyber Crime Police on Friday.
In his complaint Karthikeyan said that he was checking “Bharat matrimony “online marriage portal to check matching profiles for the prospective brides and came across Bhavika on March 3.
Introducing herself as investment banket,Bhavika told him that she is into online trading business and offered to help him teach the tricks of the trade to earn more money .
Carried away by her talks he exchanged the contact numbers and chatted on whatsapp before Karthikeyan agreed reluctantly.
Bhavika helped him to enrol in a “famuget.info,an online trading website and offered to help him invest initial ₹ 1 lakh .
The trade went well and Karthikeyan was excited that he earned ₹ 7,500.Bhavika even helped him to withdraw the money.
The next day,Bhavika advised him to invest more money to earn a good profit following which Karthikeyan invested his saving of ₹ 10 lakh,But to his shock he lost all the money in one trade .
Bhavika soon advised him to invest another round of big money to recover his loss.With no money left Karthikeyan borrowed personal loan of ₹ 16 lakh from bank on April 17 and invested .
According to him,the trade went well and his trade account showed huge profit margin.
The cheating came to light when he asked her help to withdrawal the money for which she asked him to invest ₹ 10 lakhs again.
Suspecting something fishy,Karthikeyan checked with his friends and realized that he had been duped in his complaint,Karthikeyan said that the whole trade was a fraudulent activity and even her profile in the matrimonial site which he checked later found to be fake .
The police who initiated a probe found that the suspect is operating from UK based on the country code of the whatsapp number being used .
The complainant could have checked with the friends of some experts before making online investment . online investment frauds represent over 20 per cent of the total cyber crimes reported in the city .
Fraudsters target gullible people and lure them with high returns charming them through different modus Operandi , a police officer, said .
