Noida: A 59-year-old man in Greater Noida West was cheated of nearly Rs 71 lakh after falling for a fake Ministry of Finance advertisement posted on social media.A case was registered at Cybercrime Branch police station on Saturday.The victim, a resident of Supertech Eco Village-1, said in his complaint that in January, he saw an advertisement on Facebook in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke of very high returns on an investment of Rs 22,500, and it was stated that this scheme had been started by the finance ministry for common people.“Believing this to be genuine, I sent Rs 22,500 on the given mobile number in the advertisement. After that, a woman contacted me on WhatsApp and asked me to invest Rs 50,000 more,” he told police. He said he received further instructions to invest Rs 1 lakh 50 thousand on Jan 28 and Rs 50 thousand on March 3. He claimed that to gain his trust, she later gave him instructions on the withdrawal of the amount. Thereafter, the victim was contacted by a man called Suraj Reddy, and transferred to him Rs 4 lakh 32 thousand as commission,” he said.Following this, he was asked to open a bank account in Barclay Bank, for which he was charged Rs 13 lakh. The victim said he received several other calls from the conmen, who asked for processing fees for the withdrawal. In total, he sent Rs 71 lakh to them, the victim told police.However, when the victim called them for the transfer of the returns on Aug 4, they did not receive his call.They later cut off all communication with him. A day later, the man lodged a complaint in the matter on the NCRRP portal.
