A 51-year-old woman, residing in West Bengal’s Haridevpur police station area in Tollygunge, has reported a loss of Rs 1.4 crore after being lured into investing in “the stock market” with the promise of “rapid, multi-fold returns”.

Having lost a significant portion of her savings, she filed a complaint with the Lalbazar cyber cell, prompting the Cyber Crime police station of Kolkata Police to initiate an investigation.

According to sources at Lalbazar, the complainant informed the police that she had searched online for investment opportunities in March.

Through that source, she was contacted by a company. “It is alleged that after talking to her on the phone several times, the complainant was added to a WhatsApp group. There, she was told that if she invested in the stock market, she would get several times the return in a short time,” the complaint read.

“She opened a ‘trading account’ believing the fraudsters’ words. After that, the company gave her a phone number in the name of customer service for investment.” The complaint then states that she was allegedly instructed to “submit bank documents to the customer service representative.”

Following the submission of these documents, the complainant “started investing money from various accounts.” Police investigation revealed that “the complainant had invested a total of Rs 1,39,98,000 in 26 transactions over the last few months.”

“Later, when she went to withdraw the money, including the dividends, she realized that she had been cheated,” the complaint claims.

Investigators suspect the involvement of a large network in the fraudulent scheme. According to a police source, “In this type of fraud, money is transferred to multiple accounts. We are looking into which accounts the money went to.”