The South Division Cyber Crime Police have registered a case against an unknown person, who posing as a prospective bride, lured a 41-year-old man into investing money in a scheme that promised to pay huge returns and cheated him of ₹73.7 lakh.
Based on the complaint filed by Rama Rao (name changed), a resident of Banashankari, the police have charged the accused under Information Technology Act, 2000 and also under section 318(4) (offence of cheating and dishonestly inducing the delivery of property) and 319(2) (Cheating by Personation) of Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, 2023, for further investigation.
The complainant, on March 16, 2025, befriended the accused, who claimed to be Shreya Sharma, on a matrimonial website and exchanged contact numbers. The accused proposed to marry him and lured him into online trading claiming she was investing in it too and earning a huge margin of profit.
Swayed by this, the complainant agreed to invest and since March to June this year invested a total of ₹73.7 lakhs of his savings on a website she introduced him to. The cheating came to light when the complainant realised that Shreya was asking him to invest more and more but there was neither a way of accessing his trading account nor an option to withdraw the profits. The complainant discussed this with his friends and realised that he had been cheated and raised a complaint on cybercrime helpline 1930 before approaching the police.
According to the police this is not the first case of the same modus operandi. Fraudsters have taken to creating fake profiles on matrimonial platforms, gain people’s trust by posing as prospective brides and grooms, and later introduce their targets to fraudulent high-return investment schemes and cheat them. Two such cases have been reported in East Division Cyber Crime Police Station as a bank employee and a owner of a second hand bikes showroom lost lakhs of rupees, to similar schemes.
