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Bengaluru businessman pledges gold, begs from friends, and borrows from bank to trade in crypto, but ends up losing ₹52 lakh to Bitcoin fraud
The Hindu
He pledged gold, withdrew a fixed deposit, used business overdraft and borrowed money from friends to pay ₹52 lakh to the fraudsters who were posing as Bitcoin brokers
Bengaluru
A 39-year-old businessman lost over ₹52 lakh after participating in a cryptocurrency exchange task. He pledged gold, withdrew a fixed deposit, used business overdraft and borrowed money from friends to pay the fraudsters. An FIR was registered at South East CEN Crime Police Station.
Nalagani Gururaju runs two hair salons at Electronics City in Bengaluru. On May 29, an unknown person [phone number +1(6292742279)]contacted him on WhatsApp and asked him to take up a part-time job subscribing to YouTube channels. Gururaju was promised ₹50 each for subscribing to multiple YouTube channels. Gururaju subscribed to three channels after clicking on the links sent by the unknown person. He received ₹150 in his bank account.
Later, he was added to a Telegram group which included four members who were talking about crypto tasks. An admin of the group sent details of various packages to invest money in buying and selling Bitcoins (BTC).
Members were sending several messages and photos. The text on one photo shared on the group stated: Real Time Task Availability — Pay ₹30,000 and withdraw ₹43,500, or pay ₹9,69,000 and withdraw ₹13,08,150, or pay ₹6,28,000 and withdraw ₹9,10,600.
Gururaju was told to open an account on a website to transact in Bitcoins. The website was similar to that of a popular crypto exchange site bitFlyer.
“In the Telegram group, other members were sharing screenshots of money received in their account. This made me confident about going ahead with the tasks,” he told The Hindu.
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