A 25-year-old MBA student has been arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly cheating people using a fake Instagram account on which he posed as a woman. (Representational image) A 25-year-old MBA student has been arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly cheating people using a fake Instagram account on which he posed as a woman and sold fake cryptocurrency and investment schemes, officers said. E-vouchers worth Rs 15 lakh were found with the accused, besides the details of two Google accounts and a fake Instagram account used by him, the police noted.
The accused, Rajat Aggarwal, was arrested from his residence in Haryana after the police received a complaint from a woman alleging that she was cheated of more than Rs 1.7 lakh online. Aggarwal, who is also a singer, created an Instagram account by the name ‘divya_garg_2’ on which he posed as a woman and regularly posted about investing in cryptocurrency and “doubling money”, the police said.
In the complaint received at Outer District cyber police station, the complainant alleged that she was approached by the Instagram account and lured to pay Rs 1.7 lakh with the promise of doubling the invested money in less than a month. The woman paid the money in three instalments before realising that she was being conned, the complaint said. The accused, meanwhile, kept forcing her to pay more money, she added.
Sameer Sharma, DCP (Outer District) said, “We started looking for the accused through mobile phone numbers, IMEI numbers and bank transactions. The team traced the location of the accused. Aggarwal was identified and arrested from his home in Sirsa.”
According to investigators, the accused told the police that he was once cheated of Rs 5,000 on the pretext of getting a verified account on Instagram. The DCP said he later found a few Instagram accounts on which users promoted fake investment schemes.
“He contacted them and helped in their promotion through his fake Instagram IDs. He was given a small commission for this. Later, their bank accounts were seized after a group of people filed a complaint against them. This month, he started promoting his own fake scheme of “doubling money” with the account ‘divya_garg_2’. The accused even promoted the scheme using his other Instagram IDs,” the DCP explained.
The Instagram account in question has close to 2,000 followers and displays photos and screenshots of transactions and investment schemes, the police said, adding that the cheated money was used to buy gift cards or e-vouchers online on different portals. Aggarwal is pursuing his MBA in Finance and Marketing from a private college in Sira, they said.
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