Chennai Man Loses Rs 10 Lakh In Crypto Scam, Say Scammers Trained In 'Psychological Manipulation'

By the time he realised that the ‘new’ coin and the crypto exchange site he used to buy the coin from was fake, he had already been duped of 12,000 dollars.

New Delhi: A Chennai-based man lost Rs 10 lakh in a cryptocurrency scam on May 1. 35-year-old Ashish, the businessman who has fallen victim to the scam, said he believes that such scams are an organised investment fraud, with the scammers trained in psychological manipulation. As part of the modus operandi, the online scammers, most of them being Chinese women and men, make their victims invest in a fake digital coin on the promise of rich rewards and then blocking their access to the money and wiping their account clean.

According to a report by The News Minute, Ashish said he was contacted by a person named Nancy, who claimed to be a London-based, Hong Kong native.

Ashish, as quoted by The News Minute, said, “As I run an event management company, I Interact with a lot of Chinese salespersons to purchase merchandise for events. So, I did not find her messages suspicious. Over the next two weeks, we messaged each other daily. I told her that I was married and had a child, and she kept the conversation very professional, stressing on family life and values. Through our conversations, she won my trust and confidence.”

He further recollected that a week later, Nancy asked him if he had ever invested in crypto and when he said he did a very small amount, she directed the conversation to cryptocurrency.

“She told me how she made money after she moved to London, by investing in Bitcoin when it crashed in 2020. She seemed to have vast knowledge about crypto and as an enthusiast, I began to listen and believe her when she spoke about the industry. She then told me about a “new coin” she had invested in, which was in its pre-Initial Public Offering (IPO) stages and which promised to really rise in value,” Ashish said.

He added, “She would send me special codes to invest in Wind Power Energy (WPE) as it would go public only in the start of July and ask me to not share the codes with anyone else, as this would lead to more people purchasing the coin and my share of profit reducing. She told me that my investment would multiply 100x when the coin went public. She even gave me anecdotes from her investment or from her friends’ investments, with graphs showing how her ‘investment’ had risen. She also gave me insider information on the coins.”

Ashish further added that by the time he realised that the ‘new’ coin and the crypto exchange site he used to buy the coin from was fake, he had already been duped of 12,000 dollars.

He said that on April 30 when he grew suspicious and sold his WPE to withdraw the entire amount, he was unable to do so due to pre-IPO restriction. He then tried to contact Nancy, who had by then blocked him on Twitter and WhatsApp where they used to chat.

Later, Ashish got in touch with the commissioner of police who asked him to lodge a complaint with the local police, The News Minute report said.

Recently, a Chhattisgarh-based businessman lost Rs 81 lakh after a Hong Kong-based woman convinced him to invest in a crypto coin with the promise of three times return on investment.