Overview
- The 60-year-old victim was first contacted via a Facebook request in January 2025 by someone posing as Mark Zuckerberg, followed by impersonators of a Musk associate and singer Josh Turner.
- Between January 25, 2025 and February 20, 2026, she transferred about Rs 1.57 crore into multiple bank accounts for supposed investments, processing fees, taxes and job expenses.
- Fraudsters extended the scheme with purported recovery services and a fake lawyer named Ashok Suresh, citing entities such as Miracle Givers, Lead India and Capitol Investment to extract more payments.
- She filed a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal on February 27, and an FIR was registered on March 16 at the Kanpur cyber crime police station under BNS Section 318(4) and IT Act Section 66D.
- Investigators say some funds have been frozen and the remaining money has been traced, with reported frozen amounts ranging from about Rs 19 lakh to Rs 30.42 lakh as the probe continues.