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A 70-year-old man in Delhi was cheated out of over Rs 20 crore in just a month after becoming a target of an online scam. Naresh Malhotra, a 78-year-old retired bank employee from Gulmohar Park in South Delhi, lost Rs 23 crore in that time. The situation started in August this year when Malhotra got a phone call from a woman who said she was a senior official at a telecom company, claiming that his phone number was involved in illegal activities. Shortly after, he received calls from people pretending to be from the Mumbai Police, Enforcement Directorate (ED), and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), who scared him with threats of serious legal trouble and accused him of being connected to terrorist organizations. The callers instructed him to stay at home under watch and to join video calls every two hours. They also forced him to sign a document promising to keep everything confidential.

To make him trust them, they sent him a fake bail order and warned him about passport confiscation, travel restrictions, and threats to his family. From August 4 to September 4, these fraudsters took Rs 23 crore from Malhotra’s three bank accounts through 20 transactions, also getting access to his banking and investment details. After facing significant financial loss, Malhotra reached out to the police, resulting in a First Information Report (FIR) filed by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) Unit of the Delhi Police on September 19. Later, around Rs 2.3 crore that was moved from his accounts was frozen, and an investigation started. In another case in Mumbai, four individuals, including two doctors, were charged for reportedly cheating a doctor out of Rs 70 lakh by promising his daughter entry into an MBBS program at a municipal medical college in Mumbai through the management quota.

As stated by an official from the Sion police station, where the FIR was filed, the suspects were identified as doctors Rakesh Ramnarayan Verma and Dr Akhileshkumar Rammoorthy Pal, both employed at Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College and General Hospital in Sion, along with two others named Luv Avadhkishore Gupta and Kush Gupta. The scam was uncovered when the victim went to the dean of LTM Medical College, who confirmed no such admission had happened, and the letter was fake. After realizing he had been scammed, the victim asked for his money back, but the accused ignored him repeatedly. Eventually, he reported the incident to the Sion police, resulting in the filing of an FIR.