Hyderabad: A 66-year-old city-based private consultant was duped of 3.54 crore by operators of fraudulent cryptocurrency and forex trading portals and Telangana Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB) registered a case on Monday on his complaint.In his complaint, the victim from Kondapur said he was first contacted on Facebook in Feb 2024 by a fraudster, identifying herself as ‘Navya Surj Delhi’, who persuaded him to open an account on Catal***M***t*.com, which was later rebranded as pc.omnifxpro.com.Believing the site to be genuine, he invested about 1.5 crore. “When I attempted to withdraw funds, the platform blocked access,” the complaint said. He claimed that the fraudster, posing as Navya, subsequently appeared online under the name Kajal Mishra.The complainant described similar experiences with two other fraudsters posing as women. A fraudster posing as Anushka Sharma from Chandigarh guided him to invest 16 lakh in the same omnifxpro portal and also asked him to take a loan for investment. Another accused, posing as Rishika Sharma, who also used another identity, Katha Banerjee, lured him to invest through forexflockltd.com, later renamed forexproltd.com, causing a further loss of 70 lakh.The victim alleged that the fraudsters exploited his desperation to recover earlier losses and demanded fresh deposits under the pretext of taxes or clearance fee. Additional funds transferred by him to different bank accounts through sites treasu****6*.com, inve****8.com and m****c.com were also blocked from withdrawal after he refused to pay taxes.“In total, I have transferred 3.54 crore to various bank accounts provided by the fraudsters from June 2024 till date,” the victim told TGCSB police in his complaint.Acting on the petition, TGCSB’s head quarters police station registered a case under Section 66-D of the Information Technology Act and Sections 318(4) and 319(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The amount transferred by the victim had been routed through a series of bank accounts and wallets. Investigators were analysing the money trail to identify the accused.
