A 50-year-old surgeon from Hosakote in Bengaluru Rural district, India, has told police he transferred ₹4,47,82,080 after being steered from WhatsApp onto a site presented as a cryptocurrency trading platform.
According to the police complaint reported by The Times of India on 8 September 2026, the dashboard later showed purported profits of $1,477,129, about ₹14 crore. When he tried to withdraw, the handlers demanded more money for a “Security Channel,” taxes, and processing fees.
He called helpline 1930 and approached Bengaluru’s Central Cyber Crime police. TOI did not publish the FIR number or the date of registration. The accused have not been arrested. They have not been formally identified in a public police statement.
How the complaint says it unfolded
The first WhatsApp contact, in the first fortnight of August, used the name Ayushi Sharma and introduced cryptocurrency trading. On 19 August, a second handler, using the name Vijay Anant, presented himself as a trading analyst, offered the doctor 30% of profits as commission, added him to a WhatsApp group titled “CoinTrs Transaction,” and sent a registration link for CoinTrs.com. Contact continued on Telegram as @CoinTrs.
Transfers ran from 23 August to 3 September. Accounts named in the complaint include Chesain Event Pvt Ltd, MS Subh Yatri Tour and Travels Pvt Ltd, Online Saree Hub, Sipvera Services, Praveen Silk Sarees, Sky Line Relty and Paynex. The complainant asked the police to freeze those accounts.
A case has been registered under the Information Technology Act and Section 318 (cheating) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. Section 66D of the IT Act is often used in similar impersonation cases. TOI’s report of this complaint specified the IT Act and BNS 318, not 66D by number.
The same script, other cities
The method matches other high-value complaints filed this year.
On 4 and 5 September, Malkajgiri cybercrime police in Hyderabad registered a case after a 34-year-old Kothapet doctor said he joined a Telegram group, moved to WhatsApp, used a fake trading site, and sent more than ₹1.5 crore across 59 transactions between May and June. The screen later showed ₹4.6 crore. Withdrawal was blocked on a “credit score” pretext. He received ₹1 lakh back.
In May 2026, a private doctor in Guntur alleged losses of nearly ₹13 crore on a crypto investment pitch that also used fake dashboard profits and blocked withdrawals. Police registered a case. Public reports did not name the platform.
In August 2025, a 70-year-old Bengaluru doctor from Horamavu said she lost ₹73 lakh after an online trading ad put her in a WhatsApp strategy group. The screen showed ₹1.7 crore. Extra “tax” and “fine” demands followed. She used 1930 and filed a complaint on 19 August 2025.
A different script hit the same profession weeks earlier. On 28 August 2026, a 67-year old retired doctor in Kalaburagi told CEN police he and his wife lost ₹1.79 crore in a digital arrest sequence that began with a courier call and ended with transfers after ED and NIA impersonation. What official data covers, and what it does not
Bengaluru remains India’s cybercrime capital by registered volume in the latest NCRB year. According to the Crime in India 2023 report published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a body under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Bengaluru recorded 17,631 cybercrime cases in 2023, 51.92% of cases across 19 metropolitan cities, and Karnataka recorded 21,889, the highest among states. Fraud was the motive in 68.9% of cyber cases nationwide that year. Those counts are for 2023. They do not rank 2026 on their own.
Nationally, the picture is similar. Indians lost ₹22,495 crore to cybercrime in 2025, and more than 75 to 76% of that total came from investment-linked scams, which include fake stock trading platforms, Ponzi schemes, and cryptocurrency traps, according to figures published by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a division of the MHA. A February 2026 Rajya Sabha reply said CFCFRMS had saved more than ₹8,189 crore by 31 December 2025.
Where cryptocurrency stands in India
Cryptocurrency is not legal tender in India. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) do not license or supervise individual “trading advisors”, WhatsApp investment groups, or sites such as the CoinTrs portal named in this complaint.
Under Section 115BBH of the Income-tax Act, 1961, inserted by the Finance Act, 2022, gains from the transfer of virtual digital assets (VDAs) are taxed at a flat 30%, and a 1% Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) applies under Section 194S. Only exchanges registered as reporting entities with the Financial Intelligence Unit India (FIU-IND) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, are permitted to serve Indian users.
The scheme described in the Bengaluru doctor’s complaint reflects the classic architecture of investment frauds that The Crypto Times has tracked across India’s crypto scam landscape through 2025 and 2026, in which small verified withdrawals are used to induce escalating deposits before the account is frozen, and the operators disappear. On the published facts, this complaint is cheating through a fake trading interface and mule accounts. It is not a hack of an Indian exchange.
Advisory
Victims of investment fraud are advised to file a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in and to call the national cybercrime helpline 1930 without delay, since the early-hours window is critical to placing liens on the receiving bank accounts before funds are dispersed through mule networks. The MHA has publicly attributed most of the money it has managed to freeze to complaints filed inside this window.
The investigation into the Bengaluru doctor’s case is ongoing. Police are expected to seek transaction trails, mobile numbers, and platform logs from the banks and telecom operators concerned before naming the accused. No court has convicted anyone in this matter.
Also Read: India’s ED Arrests Two in ₹40 Crore Hashpe Crypto Fraud, Searches 11 Premises
