Mumbai: A 27-year-old woman has fallen prey to scammers in bitcoin fraud and has ended up losing over Rs 15.50 lakh in 15 online transactions.

According to the police, the victim is a resident of Raigad. On February 19 last year, the victim received a call from an unknown woman who informed about an earning opportunity for the victim. The caller said that the victim would have to complete certain online tasks and she would be paid handsomely for it. The caller informed that the victim would have to perform such tasks daily and the more tasks she would complete, the more she would earn.

The caller also told the victim that she got her coordinates from a job search engine website. The scammer then shared a Telegram link with the victim and asked her to perform certain tasks. Later the accused asked the victim to download a bogus bitcoin trading app and asked her to invest in bitcoins to earn big profits. From February 20 to February 22, the victim ended up transferring Rs 15.55 lakh in multiple online transactions in different beneficiary bank accounts shared by the scammers.

However, when the victim did not receive her returns she realised that she had been duped. She then approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter recently. In her complaint, the victim has provided details of the contact numbers of the scammers and the fraudulent transaction details.

A case has been registered under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.