E-Paper
Panchkula man duped of ₹1.61 cr in trading scam
While attempting to withdraw his savings, Gill was shocked to know that his bank account had been frozen by the Bangalore cyber police
A resident of DLF Valley, Ajay Singh Gill, 41, has been duped of ₹1.61 crore after he was added to a WhatsApp group for market investment.
As per his complaint, Gill runs an academy Om Institute of Vocational Education and Training. On April 1, he received a link of a WhatsApp chat on Facebook. On clicking the link, he was made to join “The Vanguard Group Investment Club”. There were multiple members and 13 admins on this group, and one of them Sivangi Soni started talking to him about stock market investment.
She got an app, “VGTOP”, downloaded from the Google Play Store on his mobile phone. On April 26 he was told to download another app through which trading was to be done. For this purpose, he uploaded his Aadhaar card details and his wife’s mobile number as well.
Upon completing these steps, Soni told Gill that he could use the app even through messaging. So, on May 2, he started investing his money through the apps. By June 3, he had invested a total ₹1.61 crore in the scheme. The accused transferred back ₹15.87 lakh to his account, claiming it was his profit on investment.
While attempting to withdraw his savings, Gill was shocked to know that his bank account had been frozen by the Bangalore cyber police. He also came to know that Soni had also cheated multiple people.
A case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (Cheating), 467 (forgery of a valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has been registered at the Sector 12 cyber crime police station The accused are yet to be arrested.
In Chandigarh, on May 24, a case was registered after a Sector 49 resident lost ₹3.66 crore in a similar manner. On May 19, the Punjab state cyber crime police station also registered a case after Col Sanjay Bhatia (retd) of Sector 68 was duped of ₹2.5 crore by fraudsters posing as investment experts.
