New Delhi: For Suresh Kolichiyil Achuthan, a Delhi-based professional working for a private company, WhatsApp classes organised by a “director of Goldman Sachs” seemed a perfect opportunity to mint money from India’s booming stock market.
Drawn into a couple of groups by agents claiming to offer institutional-level guidance and discounts on investing in initial public offerings (IPOs), Suresh had no reason to be suspicious. After all, he had already made money from their stock tips.
His early profits made him decide to go all in, until one day, when he was asked to pay a 20 percent cut to withdraw the profits he had made on the investment.
By the time he realised he’d been the victim of a scam, Suresh had lost Rs 38.55 lakh. He filed a police complaint immediately, but it was too late.
“Initially, it started with advice on good stocks to buy and the right time to buy them. I invested in those stocks and they gave me good returns,” Suresh told ThePrint.
“Later they told me to deposit 10 percent and the balance could be paid after getting the funds. But once I paid, they asked to deposit the balance amount also, and then only I can get the amount. After some days the WhatsApp group and the website stopped working,” he said in his police complaint.
The police investigation has revealed that none of the people in the module were linked to Goldman Sachs. The investment banking firm has issued guidelines in the past on impersonation and cheating using its name.
Suresh’s losses were just the tip of the iceberg. When the Delhi Police arrested a 33-year-old Chinese national named Fang Chenjin in connection with the case last month, they uncovered a transnational stock market investment cybercrime racket, with the scale of the fraud estimated at above Rs 100 crore.
Chenjin, a permanent resident of China’s Jiangxi province, is a repeat offender. He had already spent nearly a year behind bars in two separate cases: one filed by the Andhra Pradesh Police for allegedly causing a Rs 10 crore loss to Foxlink, a key Apple supplier, and another by the Uttar Pradesh Police for allegedly scamming hundreds of people of Rs 100 crore through stock market fraud.
Investigators estimate that the scale of fraud committed by him and his associates could exceed Rs 200 crore, some of which was funnelled into surrogate bank accounts.
Cybercrime fraud promising exorbitant returns from the stock market has grown in India, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. With the markets hitting new peaks regularly, retail investor participation also saw an unprecedented increase.
Data from the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C)—a federal cyber security agency that acts as a nodal point for crackdowns on cybercrime—shows the public has lost approximately Rs 7,000 crore to cyber fraud, with investment schemes accounting for nearly 20 percent of the money defrauded. Investment and trading apps-related frauds contributed more than 50 percent of all cyber fraud incidents reported last year.
Links to Apple’s supplier and move to Noida
Chenjin’s criminal journey in India began in 2020 when he came on a work visa for Foxlink’s Tirupati factory that produced charging cables for the mobile behemoth Apple.
According to case records reviewed by ThePrint, Tirupati police booked Chenjin a few months later after the company’s human resource manager filed a police complaint alleging he had destroyed cables of critical data cable assembly modules used in the plant.
The Andhra Pradesh Police booked him under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code.
While the state police filed a chargesheet against him, he got bail after seven months in prison.
After being released in Andhra Pradesh, Chenjin shifted to Noida in August 2021 and began using an app-based stock market investment scam to dupe people, Shahdara Deputy Commissioner of Police Prashant Gutam said.
The Noida unit of Uttar Pradesh Police’s Special Task Force (STF) received information about a gang operating in the state that was luring investors into depositing money into a mobile application run by US-based companies. These funds were subsequently syphoned off from the country in the form of cryptocurrency.
The STF’s investigations found that the fraud was committed through an application named Gooro Media. Several complaints about the app had already been filed on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
The victims told the UP STF they were sold plans for Rs 1,000 on the pretense of investing in a US-based company. They were also shown several forged documents and certificates purportedly from financial institutions to support these claims.
As the victims made their payments through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the UP STF scanned the bank accounts used for collecting these payments, which led them to the mobile numbers of possible suspects.
On 15 October 2022, the UP STF received a tip-off from one of its informants that some Chinese nationals staying at a hotel in Greater Noida were involved in orchestrating fraud under the guise of share market investing.
The UP STF raided the hotel and nabbed Chenjin and his aide, Huang Kuan, another Chinese national from the Guangxi autonomous region of China.
Chenjin reportedly pegged the extent of crime committed by his group under the guise of share market investing at more than Rs 100 crore.
According to a First Information Report (FIR) lodged by the Uttar Pradesh Police, which ThePrint has seen, Chenjin revealed that his connections included a resident of Fatehpur who had provided him with SIM cards in exchange for money.
He also revealed that two more Chinese nationals—Zhangyan and Li Zhongjun—were part of the network. Zhangyan was deported from India after his visa expired and later worked from Kathmandu while Li Zhongjun was arrested in September of that year by Hyderabad Police in a similar case of fraud.
Police officers aware of the matter said that while a chargesheet has been filed against Chenjin and his aide arrested in October 2022 and he spent nearly 10 months in jail, the case is far from reaching even the trial stage with several “unknown” players still to be identified.
Scam through ‘institutional’ means
That’s not much comfort for people like Suresh, one of the victims of the scam.
Suresh got sucked into the fraud in February this year when he finally paid attention to one of the many WhatsApp messages about stock market investing that he had been flooded with.
The advice he received turned out to be more restrictive, but investors like him did not consider it a big risk because of the attractive profits being offered.
According to the FIR, those involved in the scheme shared investment links with investors like Suresh. They also offered stock market courses with daily live classes and investments at substantial discounts.
In his police complaint, Suresh alleged that the people running two WhatsApp groups through which he invested around Rs 38 lakh in several transactions claimed to be run by a director of investment banking firm Goldman Sachs.
“They showed a website called https://goldman.vip/ through which investment was happening. We were told to invest in the IPO and promised allotment through an institutional investors quota,” Suresh told ThePrint.
He also said the group claimed to be affiliated with Goldman Sachs India and used names like ‘Professor Anand Gupta’ to lend credibility to their claims.
“They claimed they are a part of Goldman Sachs India Institutional Investors and Professor Anand Gupta is a director of Goldman Sachs India. He was giving training and market analysis every evening and sharing recommendations to buy and sell shares by his assistant Kanchan every day,” he alleged in the police complaint.
“After a month, Prof Anand Gupta informed us they are creating sub-accounts of the Goldman Sachs Institutional Account and giving the group members an opportunity to trade with Goldman Sachs Institutional Account. We were given a website/app link https://goldman.vip/ to create a login ID and start trading,” he added.
Goldman Sachs has issued a warning about people and groups using its name to defraud people.
“From time to time, Goldman Sachs is made aware of websites, applications and other social media platforms created by people or groups impersonating or holding themselves out as from Goldman Sachs, and offering investment advice and soliciting money from the public,” Goldman Sachs said on its website.
“Please be aware that Goldman Sachs does not accept deposits from or offer financial services to retail investors or individuals in India. Fraudsters may pose as legitimate organizations, like Goldman Sachs, and create fraudulent websites, social media groups, send emails, or make phone calls to solicit monetary payments,” it further said.
Suresh said he bought and sold stocks that were recommended through this website/app. The website displayed live price movements but the prices offered for purchase were at a discounted rate compared with the market price, which they were told was an “institutional discount”.
He further explained that he was initially allowed to withdraw small amounts, which he later realised was a tactic to gain his trust. But when he tried to withdraw his funds later, he was asked to deposit 20 percent of the profit made through the investment advice he received.
He negotiated with them for a payment of a 10 percent commission on the profits, which he eventually had to shell out himself.
A few days later, the WhatsApp group and the website stopped working.
It wasn’t the only group investors like Suresh fell victim to.
In another WhatsApp group, investors like him were advised to invest in cryptocurrency in February because the “trainers” predicted a sluggish stock market.
Suresh made payments to 11 bank accounts which, when traced by Shahdara district police, led them to a mobile number registered with one of the bank accounts. The account was in the name of a Mundka-based firm Maha Laxmi Traders located in Mundka, Delhi.
One payment tranche of Rs 1.25 lakh made by Suresh was transferred to this account on 24 April and the mobile number linked to the account took investigators to the doorsteps of Chenjin in Delhi’s posh neighbourhood of Safdarjung Enclave.
Investigators estimate that the extent of this fraud could exceed Rs 100 crore with Rs 40 crore already being laundered through fictitious transactions in various bank accounts.
There are a total of 17 complaints against this scam on the NCRP platform.
Suresh told ThePrint that some 30-40 people appeared to be “active investors” in those WhatsApp groups.
While Chenjin is languishing in judicial custody in the fresh case filed by Delhi Police on 24 July this year, Suresh is still waiting for his money.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
Also Read: South Asian bosses, influencers & no returns. How Hibox app ‘duped’ investors to tune of Rs 500 cr
now days this trading fraud gsgfxau.com (goldman such global ) run change name BIRCH GOLD CAPITAL (GSGFBIT.COM) THIS IS GOLD MINING TRADING CYBER FRAUD RUN BE AWARE TO THIS.
HERE MORE NAGALAND GIRLS ARE SPREAD THIS CYBER FRAUD .
THIS SCAM DOES NOT STOP YET. GSGFXAU ALREADY RUN MORE OF UCO BANK ACCOUNT AND BANDHAN BANK ACCOUNT USE P2P DEPOSITE MONEY . FIRST YOU GO FRAUD SITE AND TEMP. MAIL ID AND SE PASSWORD CREATE KARE THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT MAI INVESTMENT KA BATAOOGE TAB WO AAPKO YE MORE OF ACCOUNT PROVIDED KAREGE. I ALSO LATEST VICTIM OF THIS FRAUD MOSTELY RUN BY THIS NORTH INDIA PEOPLE THROUGH I THINK CYBER FAIL TO STOP THESE TYPE FRAUD. I COMPLANINED NOT NOT GOT REULAT . FOR INDIAN PEOPLE SECURITY SPREAD THIS ALL SCAM RAN WITHOUT FEAR OF INDIAN GOVT. AGENCIES