Pune Homemaker Loses Rs 34 Lakh in Share Market Investment Scam

A 53-year-old homemaker residing in Shivajinagar, Pune, fell victim to a scam where she was swindled out of nearly Rs 34 lakh under the guise of promising returns from investing in the stock market. Ashlesha Milind Deshpande, the affected individual, has lodged a complaint against an unidentified perpetrator at the Chaturshringi police station. Responding to her complaint, the police have initiated an FIR against the accused.

As per the FIR, the complainant who is a homemaker has completed her MSc in Physiology and was in search of a good online share market class to learn the tricks and trade of share market investments. On December 23, last year the complainant received a message from a Telegram ID identified as Jyoti Sharma claiming to provide full guidance in the share market investments. Later the complainant received a call from an unknown number where she was informed that a financial tycon Kunal Singh would conduct share market classes daily between 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm and 08:00 pm to 09:00 pm and claimed the class to be free of cost.

Later the complainant was added to the WhatsApp group named as Retail Investor Alliance Group H9 whose admin was Jyoti Sharma and Rudrang Singh. A link for the online class was provided on the whats app group where the participants were taught the tricks to gain profit by investing in the share market. Later the complainant invested in companies and also gained substantial profits out of it by following the steps taught in the class.

The complaint decided to purchase upper circuit shares and was asked to open an institutional account by the accused. When the complainant researched Kunal Singh she discovered him to be in the top ten broker list and as he also claimed that he was from a defence background the complainant trusted him.

The accused lured the complainant of high profits by investing in an institutional account and asked her to invest in various companies by downloading the SKYRIM CAPITAL mobile application. Accordingly, the complaint invested Rs 33,92,619 on various occasions. Jyoti Sharma then asked the accused to withdraw all the profits from the SKYRIM CAPITAL mobile application claiming that she will incur losses if she continue to use the mobile app.

When the complainant failed to withdraw the money after multiple attempts she contacted Jyoti Sharma where she was informed that she would have to pay 10% Processing fees and 5% service tax to withdraw her money. The accused allegedly threatened to freeze her account if she failed to pay the fees. Even after paying the charges when still the complainant did not receive her money the complainant tried to contact the accused but did not receive any response. Realising she was duped the victim rushed to the Pune Cyber police station and registered a complaint which was later transferred to the Chaturshringi police station. A case under sections 34, 419, 420 and 66(d) has been registered by the police and further probe is underway.