BENGALURU: It began as a harmless reply to a wrongly sent message on Telegram but resulted in a loss of Rs 70 lakh for a 50-year-old private firm employee, who was lured into a bitcoin investment scam by an unknown woman.According to the complaint filed by a resident of Kodihalli in east Bengaluru, he received a message on Telegram from a woman identifying herself as Priya Agarwal on Nov 30, last year. She claimed she was attempting to contact a person named Rahul and messaged him by mistake. Instead of ignoring the message, the man continued the conversation.
What started as a brief exchange soon developed into regular chats, which later shifted to WhatsApp. Communicating from the number +447490569470, Priya told him that she was based in Liverpool in the UK, and ran a family business. Over time, she gained his confidence and began speaking about online bitcoin trading, claiming she was earning huge profits from it for the past four to five years.She persuaded him to invest, offering to personally guide him and assuring him of quick and substantial returns. Trusting her, the victim clicked on a link, which led him to a trading platform. He created an account and made his first investment of Rs 50,000 on Dec 9, 2025, transferring the amount to a bank account provided by the platform’s so-called customer support team.Encouraged by the profits reflected on the dashboard, he continued investing. Between Dec 9, 2025, and Jan 14, 2026, he carried out eight different transactions, transferring a total of Rs 70 lakh. To arrange the funds, the victim reportedly took loans from a bank and a finance firm and also invested his personal savings, all at Priya’s insistence. On the trading platform, his account soon displayed profits of up to Rs 2.6 crore, which strengthened his belief that the investment was genuine.The scam came to light when he attempted to withdraw the amount. Despite repeated efforts, he was unable to access any funds and soon found that his account was frozen. When he contacted customer support, he was allegedly asked to deposit more money under various pretexts, including tax and processing fees, to enable withdrawal. It was then that the victim realised he fell prey to an elaborate scam.The man approached police and lodged a complaint with the national cyber crime portal. East cyber crime police registered a case under the Information Technology Act and BNS section 318 (cheating). “We cautioned the public against responding to messages from unknown persons on social media and messaging platforms, particularly those promising quick and high investment returns,” the officer said and added such “wrong message” conversations are being used as traps by cyber fraudsters.
