In yet another case of cryptocurrency scam, an Ahmedabad-based techie lost a whopping sum of over Rs 1 crore to a woman who he had reportedly met on a matrimonial site.
Kuldeep Patel, a resident of the Saijpur-Bogha area in Ahmedabad, approached the cybercrime police alleging that a woman he met on a matrimonial site cheated him of Rs 1.34 crore in a digital currency fraud.
Patel told police that on June 23, he met a woman named Aditi Patel on a matrimonial website. She reportedly claimed she lived in Maninagar and had an import and export business in the UK.
During their conversation, the woman advised Patel to invest in a cryptocurrency named Banocoin for good returns. She also gave him the number of the firm’s customer care executive. Following this, the victim said he had a chat with a representative on the number and got himself registered on their website.
As per the FIR, Patel invested Rs 1.34 crore in 18 transactions between July 20 and August 31.
After the initial investment of Rs 1 lakh on July 20, he received a profit of 78 USDT (US dollar tether), which is a cryptocurrency. He later withdrew 50 USDT from his account without any trouble. This motivated him to keep investing.
However, all hell broke loose when he again tried to withdraw Rs 2.59 lakh from his account on September 3 and was told his account had been frozen.
Patel promptly called the customer care number, where a representative told him to invest an additional Rs 35 lakh to de-freeze his account.
After this, Patel tried contacting Aditi, but she did not respond.
With the technology boom, digital currency scams are becoming common these days, where people get robbed of their hard-earned money with a few clicks. In order to avoid such scams, people are advised to be careful before trusting strangers and perform a thorough background check before making any investment, police said.
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