A Gurgaon man was cheated of Rs 38 lakh by a woman he had met on a matrimonial site, on the pretext of investing in cryptocurrency, said police on Saturday.
According to police, 38-year-old Naman Aggarwal, who works at a consulting firm in Gurgaon, met the accused — who identified herself as Ridhi Sharma — on a matrimonial website on November 12 last year. She told the victim that she was a native of West Bengal’s Kolkata and had been living in London for the last five years.
While talking, the accused asked the man to invest in Bitcoin and also created a trading account on his behalf on the website ‘Deuncoin’, Aggarwal said in his complaint. The woman then allegedly sent the website’s link to Aggarwal on WhatsApp. Following this, a person posing as a customer care executive of the trading platform contacted him on WhatsApp.
“The woman caller had asked me to invest Rs 10 lakh, while assuring me that she would transfer another Rs 10 lakh to my trading account. I initially invested Rs 10 lakh, following which, Deuncoin’s customer care executive shared the details of a bank account with me for the money deposition,” he said in the complaint, adding that once he deposited the money, it was reflected in the trading account, and it showed that the woman had transferred Rs 10 lakh to his account as well.
Later, the woman made him transfer more money — five times between December 13 and 18 — and his total assets in the trading account reflected as Rs 1 crore. “On December 20, I received a text message from Deuncoin’s customer care support team on WhatsApp that Ridhi Sharma had transferred me the amount through money laundering, and that it would be under the scanner. They then asked me to immediately deposit Rs 10 lakh, within the next 24 hours, to restore the account, otherwise it would be frozen,” said the complainant.
He immediately deposited Rs 10 lakh, and told them that he wanted to withdraw the saved amount in his account, but to no avail. On December 22, they asked him to deposit tax amounting to Rs 8.1 lakh over the profit he allegedly made through the trading platform. After paying Rs 38 lakh, he still did not receive any money, and the team concerned, however, demanded more money from him.
“Deuncoin’s customer care support team stopped all sorts of communication after December 29, but the woman caller kept in touch with me till January 22,” he said, adding that was when he realised that he was being duped.
Based on a complaint filed by the victim, an FIR has been registered against the accused under Indian Penal Code Section 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) at the Cybercrime police station.
