Techie duped of 48L in online fraud

Pune: A senior software engineer (38) of a city-based software company lost Rs48 lakh to cybercrooks in an online share trading fraud between August and October last year.The crooks posing as executives of a prominent financial services company offered the techie good returns on investments in shares through them, took money from him and duped him. The victim filed an online complaint. After preliminary investigations, a case was registered with the Sangvi police on Wednesday.An officer from the Sangvi police said the complainant was a resident of Pimple Gurav. "According to the him, he was added to a group of investors created by a prominent financial services company on a mobile messenger app in August last year," the officer said.He said the admin of the group shared detailed information about investments in the stock market with the members. "The senior software engineer told us that the admin advised the group members to download the company's app and invest in the stocks through it. She assured good returns on investments through this app," he said.The officer said the techie did not suspect anything, thinking the app was initiated by the financial services company itself. "The senior software engineer then went on investing money as and when he was told to. He could monitor profit in the app," the officer said.He said until October 2024, the techie transferred Rs48.38 lakh to different bank account numbers provided to him. He could see in the app that his profit reached up to Rs1.31 crore. "When the senior software engineer would try to withdraw his money, the crooks used to cite some reason and demand more money from him. After realising that he was being duped, he stopped responding to them and lodged an online complaint," the officer said.He said the police had sought details of the transactions from the victim's bank. "Our investigations are on," the officer said.