The Gautam Budh Nagar cybercrime police arrested three people on Tuesday for allegedly duping a retired government officer in Noida of ₹2.54 crore on the pretext of online trading, police said on Wednesday.
According to police, the complainant, Anil Sharma, is a retired central government officialwho was lured into a forex trading website called www.lexatrade.com.
“The fraudsters contacted him through video call and lured him into doubling his investments. To gain Sharma’s trust, they initially returned ₹15 lakh to his bank account. Sharma then invested more money, but he was unable to get any returns and he ended up losing ₹2.54 crore,” Reeta Yadav, in charge of the Cyber Crime police station said.
An FIR was registered in the matter on March 24 following a complaint by Sharma at the Cyber Crime police station.
The three suspects arrested on Tuesday were identified as Vijay Sharma (56), Hemant Singharia (30), and Tarun Kashyap (35). They are residents of Delhi.
However, during the investigation, it was found that the bank accounts in which the defrauded money was transferred were accessed from Dubai by the main suspect, who is yet to be identified and arrested, they added.
“The police investigation found that the gang had taken some shops in Delhi for rent and got fake firms registered on the shop addresses. They then opened bank accounts in the name of the firm. When the GST number was investigated for each firm, 15 to 20 bank accounts were found to have been opened. A total of 150 firms have been opened by the suspects in the last two years,” the officer said.
She added that while Vijay was tasked with opening the bank accounts, Hemant used to provide the fake firms for GST registration while Tarun was tasked with getting the firms’ GST numbers.
“For every account Vijay created, he was provided with ₹1 lakh by the main suspect, who accessed these accounts from Dubai and is yet to be identified. Out of the ₹1 lakh provided to Vijay, he was tasked with distributing it with Hemant and Tarun,” added Yadav.
The suspects have been booked under charges of cheating, forgery and relevant sections of the IT Act.
“The suspects were produced before the court on Tuesday and sent to judicial custody. Further investigation is underway,” said the officer.
