People fall prey to lure of riches, cyber scamsters made over Rs 1,100 crore from TN

CHENNAI: In the first nine months of 2024, cyber fraudsters had siphoned off at least Rs 1,116 crore from victims in Tamil Nadu, of which police managed to freeze Rs 526 crore and returned Rs 48 crore to the victims.

While in most cases, scammers came up with novel ways to cheat the unassuming public, in high value multi-crore transactions such as the online trading scam, it all boils down to greed, say investigators.

“Even Warren Buffet cannot give you the profit these scamsters promise. But, our public fall for such ‘too good to be true’ schemes and give in to greed,” said a police officer investigating online trading scams.

Last month, the Greater Chennai Police’s Cyber Crime wing arrested two persons from the city, handled by Malaysian cyber scammers, for defrauding a Chennai-based businessman’s wife of Rs 10.27 crore by luring her into a fake online share trading website. The woman, a resident of Kotturpuram, saw an ad on social media and joined a WhatsApp group through which she was made to download a share-trading app on the promise of huge profits.

Over time, the woman invested Rs 10.27 crore in various bank accounts as directed in the WhatsApp group, and the app showed exponential profits. However, the profits were not reflected in her bank account.

When she enquired about this, the scammers demanded more money after which she realised the con and filed a complaint with the city police.

Most of those arrested by the Cyber Crime wing are the mules – account holders who sell their bank accounts to scammers for a commission. In May this year, a team from Avadi City Police travelled all the way to Gujarat tracing the money trail after a GST officer from Chennai lost over Rs 38.8 lakh to one such trading scam.

The GST officer was going through his Facebook feed when he spotted the advertisement. He clicked on it, which led to him being contacted by a woman, who added the official to a WhatsApp group named ‘Ashish Shah's Dalal Street Trading Champions: VIP-2’. The group members were made to download an app, CHE-SES, and were asked to buy the Initial Public Offer (IPO) stock of a company named Motisons Jewellers.

In three weeks, Manoranjan transferred over Rs 38.8 lakh to the accounts that the gang had provided in the WhatsApp group. It was only after finding out that the money could not be withdrawn that he realised that he was being taken for a ride and filed a police complaint.

The police team landed outside a 10x10 feet room in Anand District in Gujarat, the residence of a mason who had given his account details and those of the workers under him to a gang for a commission.

Senior officials in Commissionerates and in the State Cyber Crime headquarters said: “While the mules (account holders) are being traced and arrested wherever they are in the country, several of their handlers work from outside the country. We’re taking steps with the authorities to trace them and do everything legally.”