Recently, a 30-year old pharmacist in Ahmedabad, Yagnesh Kumar Thakkar, got a phone call to trade in the foreign exchange trading market with a promise to get huge returns. He blindly invested money and lost Rs. 11.63 lakhs to the forex scammers.
Thakkar is the Manipur Gam resident who operates a pharmacy shop on Bopal Nagar Palika road. After two months, Thakkar filed a complaint to the Bopal Police in Ahmedabad after realizing that scammers conned him.
He told the police that in October, scammers called him on his mobile phone. The caller said to him that he was from Meta Traders, which is a platform for investing and trading forex currency by mobile trading. The caller assured him that if he spent money in forex trading, then he will get high returns. Thakkar trusted the callers and agreed to send documents on Whatsapp as demanded by the caller.
According to the FIR, the scammer asked Thakkar to download an application, i.e., Meta Trader 5 from the Google Play Store, and log in with ID and password given by them. The caller asked Thakkar to deposit Rs 50,000 in the given account number to start trading. But he deposited Rs 49,999 at the same time via Immediate Payment Service, which is an instant payment inter-bank digital funds transfer system. After depositing the money, the app showed him the profit of $83.50 (approx. Rs 5,897), and Rs 4,600 was transferred to Thakkar’s account the next day.
Again, he was asked to deposit Rs 50,000, and he deposited Rs 49,999. After that, he got a call by the company to inform him that their company’s senior official David will call him soon.
In the night, he got a call from David, and he informed Thakkar that he could get a high and secure return of $25,000 (Rs 17.66 lakh) if you invest $15,000 (Rs 10.60 lakh). He convinced and deposited the asked amount in the next two days.
But, this time, Thakkar did not get the promised returns. Then, he called the firm for the inquiry, and he got empty promises. After some time, the firm stopped taking Thakkar’s calls and switched off their phones.
Thakkar mistook that David was speaking in Hindi, and soon, they deleted their account from the application. Thakkar said that people should not trust unknown people as they may get conned like him.
The Bopal Police Inspector, A M Brahmbhatt, said that they had registered his case, and they are looking for the evidence to proceed with their investigation.
