Pune engineer loses Rs 57 lakh to ‘movie rating’ fraud, FIR lodged

According to the 40-year-old engineer, who works for an automotive sector firm, he made 15 online transactions totalling Rs 57,15,000 to several bank accounts across India. After he realised he had been duped, he lodged an FIR at Ravet police station under the Pimpri Chinchwad jurisdiction.

According to the complainant, on February 23, he was approached by a woman on a phone messenger application. She claimed to be an executive of a “local and international movie ticket promotion rating agency”. She allegedly claimed that after the complainant invested money in the business, he would get a commission on the sales of the movie every time it got a five-star rating. After he agreed, the callers claimed that his ‘account’ had been opened with their entity.

Over the next two weeks, the complainant says he was asked to pay large sums of money and he initially made the payments expecting good returns. Subsequently, the callers allegedly started forcing him into making payments to get a higher commission and get the initial investment back. The complainant said that he made 15 transactions to accounts located in Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra before realising that he had been cheated. He subsequently approached the cyber crime cell of Pimpri Chinchwad police on March 17. Following a preliminary inquiry, an FIR was registered at Ravet police station earlier this week.

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The police said that a probe had been launched into the cell phone numbers and bank accounts used by the accused. “Cheating people on the pretext of investment into businesses of online reviews, movie ticket rating or promotion by cyber fraudsters is being used again and again…It is just a new pretext that the tricksters are giving to lure vulnerable groups, the modus operandi of investment scam remains the same,” an officer from the cyber crime cell said.