Retirees vs Crypto Scammers: India’s Bold, Baffling Heist

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There’s something wonderfully perverse about the way the digital age makes crime look slicker than a polished vacuum cleaner. Imagine a future where a retired professor sits at his computer, feeling rather grand about his investments, and ends up starring in a modern fable: Crypto is all the rage, dashboards gleam like showroom dashboards, and a kindly Telegram group whispers promises of easy riches. Welcome to the grand bazaar of deceit, where the crooks wear the chef’s hat and the guests masquerade as friendly bankers.

Hyderabad: Retired professor loses ₹3.2 crore to fake crypto platform

In Hyderabad, a retired professor from the University of Hyderabad wandered into the bright lights of a pretend trading operation and notched up a very large bill for his hubris. The scam began when he was added to a Telegram group that masqueraded as an investment advisory channel. Aman Kumar-who claims to be a professional stock trader-slid into the scene, peddling cryptocurrency arbitrage as the kind of low-risk, high-return magic that makes you nod enthusiastically and forget to check the wallpaper for dollar signs.

After shelling out an initial ₹8,500, he was treated to a dashboard that showed profits and a balance that ballooned to ₹4.55 crore, a number so sunny it could be mistaken for a weather forecast. It wasn’t real, of course, but it was persuasive enough to persuade. Between September and December, the professor moved over ₹2.58 crore to bank accounts and UPI IDs supplied by the swindlers, who described the payments as investments, taxes, and transaction fees. Attempts to withdraw were met with delays, excuses, and fresh demands for money-at one point, ₹80 lakh more was demanded just to process a withdrawal. Only then did the professor realize the dream had been a very expensive nightmare and filed a complaint with the Rachakonda Cybercrime Police.

A second Hyderabad victim, a 69-year-old retired bank manager, also fell for a different ruse: WhatsApp impersonation of a US-based stockbroker and a fake trading platform, costing ₹63.15 lakh. Taken together, the two Hyderabad cases surpass ₹3.2 crore in losses.

Lucknow: Businessman duped of ₹1.15 crore in SIP-turned-crypto scheme

Meanwhile in Lucknow, Rajendra Singh Chauhan, a businessman from Puran Nagar, found himself ₹1.15 crore poorer after a scam that began with SIPs and eventually hopped onto the cryptocurrency bandwagon. The accused, Himanshu Gihar, entered Chauhan’s life in 2019 and, over time, built trust enough to coax him into SIP investments with promises of up to ten times monthly returns.

From 2021 to 2023, Chauhan invested about ₹50 lakh and saw nothing in return-zilch, nada, not even a pretend dividend. When confronted, the accused claimed the SIPs had produced losses and pivoted to crypto, assuring that profits would rebound and the earlier losses would be recovered. Between 2023 and 2025, Chauhan added ₹65 lakh, this time sent to the accused’s family members’ accounts, not directly to him. A mobile app displayed “progress,” but it was all a fake – the app bore the scammer’s own email and phone number. Neither the ₹50 lakh nor the ₹65 lakh ever came back. Attempts to reclaim funds were met with delay, stalling, and, eventually, threats. A case has been registered and the investigation is underway.

A pattern that keeps repeating

The rhyme is depressingly familiar: social engineering via messaging apps, fake dashboards with inflated balances, a drip-feed of smaller demands that grow into colossal transfers, and an exit plan built on intimidation, silence, or simply vanishing into the ether. The Hyderabad professor was drawn in by Telegram; the Lucknow businessman by a long, careful relationship. The outcome? Life savings siphoned away by urgency dressed up as opportunity and trust dressed up as benevolence.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Just last week, a Ludhiana industrialist lost nearly ₹20 crore in a pig-killing crypto scam run through Facebook and WhatsApp, with funds routed through 76 forged bank accounts across 15 banks. In Hyderabad itself, a 56-year-old software professional recently lost ₹2.92 crore after being added to a WhatsApp group that flashed manipulated profit screenshots. Earlier this month, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs warned against Trust Wallet crypto drainer scams after complaints surged on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.

The national picture is, frankly, grim. Over 24 lakh cybercrime complaints were filed on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal in 2025, with fraud losses totaling ₹22,495 crore. Recovery is a sad joke: of ₹36,448 crore in cumulative losses since the portal began, only ₹60.52 crore has been returned to victims.

The PRAHAAR counter-terrorism strategy, released in February 2026, flagged the growing use of crypto wallets by criminal networks. A dedicated darknet and cryptocurrency task force has been set up under the Multi-Agency Centre. The Union Budget 2025-2026 allocated ₹782 crore for cybersecurity projects. And from April 1, 2026, new powers under the Income Tax Bill allow authorities to access crypto wallets, emails, and social media during authorized searches.

But for the retired professor in Hyderabad and the Lucknow businessman, those measures arrived fashionably late. The infrastructure of crime, alas, tends to travel faster than the law. Law enforcement advises citizens to verify any investment platform with SEBI, avoid unsolicited online financial offers, and report suspicious activity through the national cyber helpline at 1930 or via cybercrime.gov.in.

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2026-04-29 09:45