Mumbai woman loses $30,000 in crypto scam to man she met on matrimonial site: Report
A 60-year-old Indian woman lost nearly $30,000 in a crypto investment scam after she was contacted on the matrimonial site where she had registered to look for a life partner.
The scammer told her he was a US-based engineer and could get her to make quick profits through bitcoin investments.
Investment in love gone wrong
According to the media reportsThe Mumbai woman, who is a retired executive from a private company, registered on a matrimonial website in early 2022. Soon she was approached by a person on the website and the two exchanged phone numbers and started calling and chatting regularly.
In March 2022, the man told her about a cryptocurrency investment opportunity and how he was allegedly making huge passive income. He shared the phone number of another person and told her that he would guide her in her investments.
Between April 2022 and December 2022, the woman invested nearly $30,000 (INR 2.4 million) in cryptocurrencies through the “guide”. At one point when she had $62,000 in her virtual account, she asked the “wizard” to help her withdraw the money. They told her she would have to pay a currency conversion fee and taxes equivalent to $15,000 to withdraw the money.
While still thinking about what to do, she noticed that the duo had stopped communicating and her virtual account had become dysfunctional.
At this stage she approached the police and complained. According to the authorities, a case has been registered under the relevant sections of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy.
Same city Another incident
In a similar fraud, another Mumbai woman was scammed of almost $12,500 (INR 1 million) when she was looking for a work-from-home opportunity and was asked by the scammers to invest in bitcoins. The 49-year-old victim realized she was scammed when she was asked to pay close to $10,000 (INR 0.8 million) just to withdraw her money.
India has reported quite a few crypto scams in recent times. And in most of these cases, investors’ lack of knowledge about crypto investing has left them vulnerable to fraud.
Multiple instances
Early this month The crypto potato reported that an Indian student committed suicide by hanging himself after losing investments worth $2,400 to a fake bitcoin investment scheme. India has quite a large list of crypto scams.
Another recent example was the arrest of an accused in a crypto scam worth $160 million.
