Bengaluru: Two lose Rs 2.15 crore to stock scams

Bengaluru: Two Bengalureans lost a combined Rs 2.15 crore after investing in fraudulent stock market schemes, the police said. 

The West CEN police have registered two separate FIRs and launched investigations. 

Shantanu Reddy (name changed), a 48-year-old businessman from Visvesvaraya Layout, told the police that he met a woman named Ashmita Tiwari on Facebook. She told him she was the manager of Barclays Investment Bank in Worli, Mumbai. 

She sent him a link to a bogus website to upload his personal information. He was later added to a WhatsApp group ‘CATALIST CUSTOMER SERVICE’. He was subsequently informed of investment opportunities and was convinced after members of the group shared screenshots of their earnings. 

Over three months, Reddy wired Rs 1,54,99,136 to various bank accounts shared by the scamsters, believing that he was making gains as the initial platform where he registered and uploaded his data had a dashboard that showed his “gains” from the trades. He realised the con after he couldn’t withdraw any of his gains or his capital. 

In the case of Randeep S, an engineer from Vijayanagar, the modus operandi was the same, but he was added to a different WhatsApp group called 'India Stock HUB12'. Similar to Reddy, 30-year-old Randeep was told to register on a website called 'Citadel Securities' through which he could trade. 

Randeep wired the scamsters Rs 61.30 lakh over two months. Unlike Reddy, Randeep initially received around Rs 90,000 as gains over his first “investment” of Rs 3.50 lakh. 

Investigators have sought details from the banks to whose accounts the proceeds of the crime were transferred to trace the money trail.