MANGALURU: A man lost Rs 1.12 crore to online trading scam after accepting a friend request from a woman on the Happn dating app. According to the complaint filed with CEN police station here, the complainant accepted a friend request from one Leena Jose on the app on June 28.
She asked him to continue chatting on Telegram and suggested that he invest in Admiral Market Forex trading. On her advice, he downloaded an app called Wavegptexa and logged in.
On July 3, the complainant transferred Rs 50,000 via NEFT to Wavegptexa. Soon after, he was informed that higher investments would yield greater profits which led him to transfer Rs 10 lakh to various bank accounts provided by the accused.
The app showed a profit of Rs 80 lakh in his account. When he tried to withdraw the amount, he was informed that 30% of the tax amount needed to be paid first.
So, the complainant transferred Rs 19.26 lakh to various accounts.Later, he was told that an additional 10% bank transaction fee was required to convert the dollars to Indian rupees, after which he transferred Rs 7.36 lakh.
When he attempted to withdraw Rs 50 lakh, he was informed that, due to the large sum, the risk control department had withheld the funds and that he needed to deposit 50% of the amount to release it.
The complainant then transferred Rs 26.84 lakh. Further withdrawal attempts were met with another condition: the complainant needed to become a VIP client, but his credit score was too low.
To raise the score to 100%, he was asked to deposit more money. Following these instructions, the complainant continued to transfer funds to various accounts until September 23.