Posing As Microsoft Employees, 5 Indians Cheat US Woman Of Rs 3 Crore

The CBI has booked five people for allegedly posing as Microsoft tech support and siphoning off USD 400,000 (Rs 3.37 crore as per current rates) retirement funds of a US citizen, officials said on Friday.

A case of fraud has been registered against Delhi-based Praful Gupta, Sarita Gupta, Kunal Almadi, Gaurav Pahwa and Kanpur-based Rishabh Dixit on the basis of inputs from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), they said.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) conducted searches at their premises in Dilshad Garden and Janakpuri in Delhi, and Kidwai Nagar in Kanpur, the agency said in a statement. It is alleged that victim Lisa Roth's laptop was hacked, following which she called a number on the screen and a person feigning affiliation with Microsoft misguided her by informing there were some wire transfers from her retirement account.

The imposter advised her to contact Fidelity Investments, the CBI FIR stated. When Roth called the number provided by the purported Microsoft employee, she was instructed to transfer money from her Fidelity Investments account to a more secure account. During the phone call, the caller deceitfully gained unauthorised remote access to her system and transferred a staggering USD 300,000 (Rs 2.48 crore as per current rates) from her Fidelity Investments Account to her account with First State Bank, the FIR stated.

The caller then opened an account with Binance.com on behalf of Roth and advised her to wire the USD 300,000 to an account titled "Prime Trust" with Binance.com, it said. The FIR stated that "accordingly, Roth went to First State Bank and tried to transfer USD 3 lakh to 'Prime Trust'".

"However, after a few days the said transaction was declined by Binance.com as she had wrongly written 'Prime Title' in place of 'Prime Trust', and the amount was returned to her First State Bank account," it stated.

The CBI alleged that after the transaction was declined, the caller again contacted Roth advising her to transfer additional money from her Fidelity Investments account to her First State Bank account so that an amount of USD 400,000 (Rs 3.37 crore as per current rates) could be transferred to a more secure account. The caller exercising unauthorised remote control over Roth's system, opened her an OKcoin account using her mobile number and e-mail ID, and advised her to transfer the USD 400,000 to it. Following the deceptive advice, she transferred the USD 400,000 to the OKcoin account on June 7 last year. However, when she logged into her OKcoin account after a few weeks, she found that her account was empty. The pilfered amount was astutely converted into cryptocurrency, which was further transferred to the following five persons in their Binance and FTX wallets, the FIR stated.

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