This is a case where the victim watched a Facebook Ad about Algo Trading Subscriptions. The Advertisement said how their Algo Software can bring profit in Trading. The Victim, Ravi (name changed), fell for this and got scammed of around ₹23,000 in fee and then ₹12,000 in trading capital.
This is what he said in this complaint:
ADB: How did it all start?
Victim: Well, I saw some videos on Facebook about Algo trading based Strategy. They also shared a few of their profit screenshots. Just watching them, I got curious and filled up their lead form for a callback.
ADB: Ah. They must have called you then?
Victim: They called me several times after that. After a bit of convincing, I paid them for a 1-month subscription, which was ₹8,500.
ADB: Did you make any profit?
Victim: Unfortunately, no. In that one month, they caused me an overall loss of ₹5,000 on a Capital Amount of ₹30,000.
ADB: That’s terrible. Did you reach out to them? What did they say?
Victim: I called them but they kept saying that with the 1-month plan, I only had access to one strategy. They urged me to upgrade to a 6-month plan, promising better profitability with six strategies.
ADB: Please don’t tell me you upgraded and bought another plan of theirs!
Victim: Well, I was careless enough and said Yes to the. I really thought they will help me and I will be able to recover my losses. Plus, they offered me a discount of ₹15,000 on the 6-month plan, so I only needed to pay an additional ₹15,000. I paid the amount.
ADB: Did it help?
Victim: Not really. After upgrading, they sometimes made profits, but more often, I faced losses. Meanwhile, they were sharing fake profit screenshots with my friends, showing profits of ₹30,000 to ₹40,000. My friends didn’t know these screenshots were being shared with multiple people.
ADB: That sounds fishy. What happened next?
Victim: In 10 days, I was at a loss of ₹12,000, while they shared fake profit screenshots of ₹1,00,000. I confronted them with proof, accusing them of scamming me.
ADB: What did they say?
Victim: They said it was a “marketing strategy.” After that, I sent them a legal notice through my lawyer.
ADB: Did they respond?
Victim: The Relationship Manager’s response was dismissive. He said a legal notice wouldn’t affect them and that they don’t refund money. I researched and contacted different people from their page, finding that many others had similar experiences. They had taken the money and then stopped responding to calls.
ADB: Did they ever give you a proper invoice?
Victim: No, despite multiple requests, they didn’t. Their response was, “Bill ka kya karna hai” (What will you do with the bill?).
So, this was our team’s conversation with a victim where he was defrauded through a social media ad leading him to a random algo-trading strategy.
Learnings:
First of all, you need to understand that only those Algo-Softwares can be operated in Trading, that are approved by the NSE (National Stock Exchange). Nobody can just randomly “create” any such algo-software and start selling it legally.
Rest everything that you see on the internet is illegal and fake. Stay away from such frauds.
Secondly, if you end up becoming a victim of such frauds, there is a proper complaint mechanism that needs to be followed for redressal.
Ravi lost money in this case. Hopefully, you don’t fall victim to 1000s of such scams running out there.
