In April this year she came across a link on Instagram about a platform offering stock trading options. After clicking the link she was added to a phone messenger group where the administrators and members were discussing various investment options into stock markets and how they were getting high returns over the last many years. She was subsequently contacted individually and was made to download a phone based share trading application. The Cyber fraudsters posing as executives from this platform, told her that she could earn five to 10 times returns on her investments. The suspects began telling her to send money to various bank accounts and these amounts started reflecting on the app she had downloaded on her phone.

Between the first week of May and last week of June she made as many as 36 transfers totalling Rs 1.79 crore against which her profits were reflected as Rs nine crore. When she tried to make withdrawals, she was told that she would have to pay Rs 50 lakh tax. It was at this point that she started having suspicions about the platform and later realised that she had been cheated. She approached the Cyber crime cell and an FIR was registered.

Investigators have said that in the large number of online share trading frauds reported till now, the victims have been mainly targeted through social media advertisements, videos and reels. Many of these fraudulent posts misuse the images of well known investment banking and stock trading platforms and faces of well known stock trading trainers. Over the last seven months, the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad police have reported what their cyber investigators are calling an epidemic, a worrying surge in online share trading fraud cases. Fraudsters employ a variety of baits, including trading tips, virtual lectures, mobile applications, and enticing promises of exorbitant returns.

In an advisory issued in this regard on February 26, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said, “Fraudsters are enticing victims through online trading courses, seminars, and mentorship programs in the stock market, leveraging social media platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram, as well as live broadcasts. Posing as employees or affiliates of SEBI-registered Foreign Portfolio Investors, they coax individuals into downloading applications that purportedly allow them to purchase shares, subscribe to IPOs, and enjoy “Institutional account benefits”—all without the need for an official trading or Demat account. These operations often use mobile numbers registered under false names to orchestrate their schemes.”