Hyderabad: A software engineer was duped of Rs 50 lakh in a cyber fraud in Hyderabad after he was lured with high returns on investment.
The victim is a 42-year-old man, and a resident of Adibatla, approached the Rachakonda cybercrime police and filed a complaint. The complainant stated that he was contacted on WhatsApp and redirected to a Telegram group where he was introduced to a lucrative task-based investment programme linked to international stock markets.
The sofware engineer was promised high returns for completing online rating tasks. To gain the victim’s trust, the fraudsters initially paid some amount for each task. As he started investing, he was told that higher ‘VIP levels’ would help him earn much larger profits. For this, he was asked to deposit Rs 80,000 and was later charged an additional “thawing fee” of the same amount.
After the software engineer transferred the amount, the fraudsters asked for more money to process the withdrawal. The victim paid Rs 16 lakh, however, the system repeatedly declined his requests, citing fabricated technical issues such as incorrect bank details and merchant account errors.
Each time, the fraudsters demanded fresh payments on pretext of repair charges, unfreeze fees, or account score upgrade. The victim was assured that the full balance would be released once the issues were resolved. Only, it never happened, and the chain continued.
Believing their explanations, he transferred multiple payments, often under pressure and time-bound threats of account blockage or freezing of bank accounts. Even after making the demanded payments, the platform continued to generate new reasons to block withdrawals.
Only after losing more than Rs 50 lakh, the victim realised the entire setup was fraudulent and that the operators had no intention of returning his money. A case has been registered based on his complaint with the Rachakonda Cybercrime police, and the investigation is underway.
