Bengaluru
A 39-year-old businessman lost over ₹52 lakh after participating in a cryptocurrency exchange task. He pledged gold, withdrew a fixed deposit, used business overdraft and borrowed money from friends to pay the fraudsters. An FIR was registered at South East CEN Crime Police Station.
Nalagani Gururaju runs two hair salons at Electronics City in Bengaluru. On May 29, an unknown person [phone number +1(6292742279)]contacted him on WhatsApp and asked him to take up a part-time job subscribing to YouTube channels. Gururaju was promised ₹50 each for subscribing to multiple YouTube channels. Gururaju subscribed to three channels after clicking on the links sent by the unknown person. He received ₹150 in his bank account.
Later, he was added to a Telegram group which included four members who were talking about crypto tasks. An admin of the group sent details of various packages to invest money in buying and selling Bitcoins (BTC).
Members were sending several messages and photos. The text on one photo shared on the group stated: Real Time Task Availability — Pay ₹30,000 and withdraw ₹43,500, or pay ₹9,69,000 and withdraw ₹13,08,150, or pay ₹6,28,000 and withdraw ₹9,10,600.
Gururaju was told to open an account on a website to transact in Bitcoins. The website was similar to that of a popular crypto exchange site bitFlyer.
“In the Telegram group, other members were sharing screenshots of money received in their account. This made me confident about going ahead with the tasks,” he told The Hindu.
Once Gururaju expressed an interest to trade, he was told to transfer money to various account numbers. He sent money to 7 different accounts. The fraudsters, who were posing as BTC brokers, claimed to be trading the coins he had bought, and that the same was reflected in the account (crypto wallet), which he had opened on their website.
Gururaju had transferred ₹52 lakh to the accounts. As per his crypto account, he had a total of over ₹65 lakh after including the profit. But, although Gururaju could see profits growing in the account, he did not have the option to withdraw the money.
When he asked the admin of the Telegram group to allow him to withdraw the money, the admin claimed that he could withdraw his money if he paid tax on the same. Other members in the Telegram group posted messages saying that this is the rule of the company.
Gururaju entered into a personal chat with the admin and requested return of his money. The admin allegedly admitted that the whole scheme was a fraud and told him to pay ₹3 lakh more to join the group, and become a partner. The admin claimed that they work from Mumbai.
Gururaju is now bankrupt. He does not have money even to pay the salaries of his salon staff.
He approached the bank with his complaint. The bank was unable to recover the money transferred by Gururaju to the accounts of the fraudsters, which had been opened in private banks in Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
Published - June 30, 2023 01:21 pm IST
