I-T officer duped of ₹10L by cyber frauds

MUMBAI: A 57-year-old I-T officer lost ₹10 lakh to fraudsters via a fake online trading app, after her son was lured into the scheme. Police are investigating.

MUMBAI: A 57-year-old woman working as an administrative officer in the Income Tax (I-T) department was duped of ₹10 lakh by fraudsters using the fake online share trading modus operandi.

I-T officer duped of ₹10L by cyber frauds

The cyber frauds first approached the complainant’s son by adding him to a WhatsApp group on November 27 last year, luring him with easy earning of 10 to 15 percent profit on investments in IPOs and trading.

Believing the advices doled out in the group, he downloaded an app named ‘QuantsAIS’ and started investing and trading shares through it. His virtual account reflected that he was earning profits. Observing this, the I-T officer, who is also the complainant in the case, installed the app on January 14 on her mobile phone and started investing money in online trading.

However, when she tried to withdraw money from her virtual account, she was unable to do so. On enquiry, she was told by the group admin that if the profits exceed ₹2 lakh, the customer is required to pay 30% towards taxes.

After paying a total ₹9.78 lakh in this way and still not being able to withdraw any money, she started suspecting something was amiss and approached the Navghar police station. The police recorded her statement and registered a case under cheating and other relevant sections of the IT Act against unknown persons. “Further investigation is going on,” said a police officer.