“The real money is made from hope. Not honesty.”
That line wasn’t spoken in some crime thriller. It was the unspoken motto of Chander Mohan Singh, a 32-year-old orchestrator of chaos.
But here’s the twist—he didn’t run his scam from a shady brokerage office or some offshore bunker.
He did it from Tihar Jail.
Inside Tihar, A Crime Was Brewing
It was just another summer morning in Tihar Jail No. 3.
The guards were busy with roll call, the canteen smelled of overboiled rice, and inmates lounged around — some repenting, some pretending.
But Chander Mohan Singh was busy — not with remorse, but with managing a scam worth over ₹3.6 crore.
He had a phone. Yes, inside jail. He had WhatsApp. And most importantly, he had victims.
“Get him on the group. Tell him we’re SMC-affiliated,” he allegedly texted one of his outside operatives.
“And send him the new SMCLE app link. Upper circuits wala pitch — full confidence.”
The plan was as clean as it was cruel. Find middle-aged investors — ideally retirees or cautious traders — and lure them into a “premium” trading group.
Once in, they’d be fed a daily dose of market predictions and insider tips.
The real game began once they were convinced enough to install a fake app and deposit money for “institutional trading benefits.”
Surinder Thakur’s Costly Lesson in Trust
“I thought it was legit,” said Surinder Kumar Thakur, a Chandigarh-based investor.
His voice, in the FIR, is one of disbelief and betrayal.
He had joined a WhatsApp group named ‘P15 Stock Market Exchange Club’, supposedly run by elite market analysts.
The names dropped were impressive. The stock calls? Even more so. Every morning brought new hope, and every evening, his trust in the group deepened.
Then came the pitch:
“Sir, you’ve crossed ₹20 lakh in investments. You now qualify for our institutional account. You’ll get early entries in upper circuit stocks — like big players do.”
That was all the hook he needed.
What followed was a financial horror story — ₹3.66 crore transferred across multiple accounts between February and March 2024.
And then? Silence.
No app login, withdrawal option or reply.
The Reveal: Scam Run by an Inmate
When Chandigarh Cyber Police traced the IPs, bank trails, and WhatsApp activity, they couldn’t believe it.
“The guy is inside Tihar?” the officer asked, according to one source.
“Yeah,” came the reply, “And he’s not new to this. He’s in there for two other cyber frauds.”
Using jail time not as punishment but as a base of operations, Singh had turned incarceration into a crime hub.
He wasn’t alone. There were handlers outside — money mules, account openers, ad spammers — all working in sync.
They had cloned the brand of SMC Global Securities, built a convincing app called SMCLE, and even run a support team to talk to victims.
What This Scam Teaches Us
Honestly? That crime has evolved. And not in some dark web, anonymous hacker way. No. This is fraud 2.0 — run from jail, on WhatsApp, with believable branding and good storytelling.
It preys on greed, yes. But more than that, it targets trust.
It also exposes a haunting problem: If Tihar Jail, one of the most high-security prisons in India, is hosting such operations — what else is possible?
The Bigger Picture
This isn’t a one-off. Similar patterns have emerged across India. Whether it’s options tips, forex groups, or crypto “signals,” fake experts with slick talk and cloned apps are manipulating retail sentiment daily.
