Mumbai: A 27-year-old civil contractor has fallen prey to scammers who induced him to play online card games on a bogus gaming website. After initially giving some winning amount to the victim, the scammers induced the victim to pay Rs 78.90 lakh.

According to police, the victim is a resident of Jalgaon. On November 3, he received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number asking if he was interested in online gaming. After the victim agreed, the scammers shared a web-link with him after which he was allowed to play card games after creating an account on the website.

The victim was then told to pay money to play online games. After initially spending some money, the victim won games and also received around Rs7 lakh in his bank account. After the victim received the money, the scammers managed to gain his trust and lured him to invest more.

The scammers then asked the victim to play more games for which he was asked to pay money. From December 8 to 18, the victim played several online games and paid Rs78.90 lakh. The victim could see his earnings on the gaming website, but was unable to withdraw the same.

The victim then realised that the website was being controlled and manipulated by the scammers wherein despite winning the games, his winning points were getting subtracted instead of getting added. Later when the victim confronted the scammers, he was asked to pay more in taxes in order to withdraw his money.

Having realised that he had been duped, he approached the police and got an offence registered. A case has been registered by the cyber crime police under sections 318 (cheating) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections 43A (compensation for failure to protect data), 66C (identity theft) of the Information Technology Act.