Crimes & SIT, Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police A V Ranganath said that in the recent times, there is a significant rise in the Cyber crimes related to the fake stock market trading applications and fake trading advisories wherein the victims were losing huge amount of money.
Fraudsters approach victims through various online social media platforms like Telegram, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook by advertisements regarding Free Stock market Tips and advices, Ranganath said in a release here on Wednesday.
To gain the confidence of the victim, the fraudsters post the fake Screenshots of the Profits earned by other Clients and initially the fraudsters will transfer money to the victim’s bank account.
Further , they insist the victims to join the Premium/VIP group, by stating that they share Stock market tips/advice with which they could get more profits.
Fake profits will be displayed on the Dashboard of the website but when the victim tries to withdraw those profits, the withdrawal option will be blocked and the fraudsters further insist to transfer money for unblocking the account by citing different taxes and penalties.
In the most of the cases, working professionals, Charted Accountants, Advocates are getting trapped by the fraudsters, he said.
Recently, an Advocate saw an advertisement in Facebook and invested an amount of Rs.85 lakhs in a fake Trading website and got victimised to this fraud while another victim who is an IT employee was added in a Whatsapp group by the fraudsters and lost an amount of Rs.55 lakhs, the Joint Commissioner said.
Another victim who is a CA by profession was trapped by the fraudsters with a fake trading website and lured an amount of Rs.91 lakhs from him, he said.
Ranganath said pubic should never trade the stocks in any unknown Applications other than registered with SEBI and should not transfer the money to the Individual Bank Accounts as the Stock broker facilitate the transfer of the money through their Application only.
Public should not believe in dubious returns offered by the fraudsters and make sure of the applications while downloading from Google Play store or their Own Websites, he said, adding Demat account credentials should never be shared with unknown persons.
