On off days, when he isn't directing staff around the resort kitchen, chef Sumit Kumar dedicatedly watched investment videos. "It was on such a day in June that I happened to like a Facebook video from a financial advisor," says Kumar. That one FB like would rob him of Rs 38 lakh, an amount he thought he was investing to send his daughter abroad for education.

advertisement

In the weeks that followed, Kumar, a 59-year-old chef from Delhi currently working in Uttarakhand, would end up losing money borrowed from his wife and also from gold loans.

It wasn't a split-second hijacking of the brain like in digital arrest cases, but an elaborate scam staged over weeks that robbed Kumar of his hard-earned money. The scam involved detailed websites, WhatsApp groups, text message updates on account balance and calls from offices of asset managers.

While Kumar was scammed of Rs 38 lakh, an elderly doctor from Indore was robbed of Rs 3.5 crore, and a Hyderabad-based software engineer of Rs 1 crore in September. A Noida-based engineer lost Rs 42 lakh as scammers made him invest through a fake trading platform, The Times of India reported on November 1.

Around 30,000 people across cities in India lost Rs 1,500 crore in the last six months to investment scams, according to a report by the cyber wing of the Home Ministry in October. Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Hyderabad accounted for nearly 65% of the cases.

Investment scams in which fraudsters impersonate popular wealth managers, finfluencers or officials from reputed wealth management companies are relatively new but have evolved with AI deepfake videos, say experts.

With the stock market in India gaining, people thought investing in shares would give better returns than traditional instruments like fixed deposits. This belief was reflected in the sharp rise in the number of retail investors in India, with Demat accounts reaching 200 million in June this year.

Scamsters took note of the trend. They set up websites mirroring those of wealth management companies, created fake videos of experts, employed mule accounts and impersonated experts to cheat unsuspecting people.

The person who got in touch with Sumit Kumar said she was calling from the office of Karan Bhagat, one of India'