Mumbai Police’s South Region Cyber Police Station has arrested Mohammad Kaleem Akbar Ali Khan, aged 29, for allegedly deceiving a woman out of Rs5.39 crore by convincing her to invest in fake stock trading schemes. The arrest followed an investigation that revealed Khan’s bank account was linked to the fraudulent transactions.
Initially, what appeared to be a single case soon unraveled into a much larger fraud operation. Investigators discovered that Khan’s bank account had been used in 51 separate cyber fraud cases across India. His account had appeared in Layer 1 fraud networks seven times and Layer 2 networks 31 times, indicating its involvement in laundering illicit funds from multiple scams.
The woman, who was contacted by Khan on the dating app Topface, was led to believe he was a businessman. They eventually moved their communication to WhatsApp, where Khan persuaded her to invest in a fake stock trading platform. The woman initially received a return of Rs20 lakh, which encouraged her to invest further. However, when she attempted to withdraw the full Rs5.39 crore, she was told she needed to pay a 30% tax fee, which raised suspicions about the legitimacy of the scheme.
Further investigation by the Cyber Cell revealed that ₹5 lakh of the defrauded amount had been routed through Maxmore Payment Digitech Pvt. Ltd., a firm registered in Khan’s name. Khan was directly involved in accepting and transferring the proceeds of the scam.
