Ahmedabad Crime Branch registered a complaint against a gang operating by sending links to retail investors through Facebook and WhatsApp, luring them with high profits, and then duping them of their money.

Nilesh Dhanani, a builder from Isanpur, joined a WhatsApp group for stock market trading via a link he found on Facebook in March. In this group, a person named Anjali Sharma used to send links to invest in various stocks through WhatsApp, changing her phone number every time she sent the links.

On May 21, Dhanani was added to another WhatsApp group. In this group, a person had asked him to download an application to invest in the stock market for higher returns.

Dhanani had downloaded the application and had begun trading on it. 

However, just six days later, on May 27, the application had stopped working. The scammers sent him a new link to download another app.

Dhanani invested ₹91 lakh in the market through 17 different transactions on the second application. However, when he tried to withdraw the money, he was informed that a deposit of 15% of the profit was required for withdrawal. Following which he was able to withdraw only ₹1.52 lakh, and after that, he could not withdraw any more funds.

As a result, Dhanani suffered a total loss of ₹1,89,48,000, including the profit shown. He then reported the scam to the Cyber Crime Branch.

In a similar case in Ahmedabad, Imran Shaikh, a resident of Dariyapur and an individual working in the fruit market, was also duped out of money through online trading. He lost ₹85.37 lakh after clicking on a link sent to him via text message, which instructed him to invest in the stock market using an app.

The Cyber Crime Branch has registered two separate cases against the gang involved in such scams and has begun investigating further.

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