Indian National Falls Victim to Bitcoin Scam on Telegram, Loses $77K

A man in India has become a victim of a Bitcoin investment and lost around $77 thousand

ContentsScammer initiates contact with pretensesA Bitcoin investment scheme leads to a major lossFraud Fizzles out as retaliation is not possiblePolice issue Cryptocurrency fraud warningThe fraud was committed via the Telegram messaging service, where a woman who contacted him claims to have made a mistake

Governments have since put out warnings regarding the increasing number of crypto-related frauds in India.

Scammer initiates contact with pretenses

The victim is a 50-year-old Bengaluru resident who was first contacted by a woman called Priya Agarwal on November 30, 2025

She alleged that she had made a wrong call to contact him rather than a man called Rahul. The victim did not stop the communication despite this weird introduction

With time, the woman changed the conversation to WhatsApp, where she started developing a sense of trust with the victim, who thought that she was a citizen of Liverpool, UK.

A Bitcoin investment scheme leads to a major loss

The more she communicated, the more the victim was presented with a Bitcoin investment opportunity by the lady

Priya alleged that she had been making large profits out of Bitcoin investments in the last several years and would help him achieve the same

Relied on her advice, the victim invested. His first investment, amounting to Rs. 50,000, was on December 5, 2025, when he transferred money to a physical account offered by a customer support representative of the trading application she suggested

The victim encouraged himself with his first earnings and went ahead to invest more and more until he had put in a total of 2.6 crores of his personal savings and loans.

Fraud Fizzles out as retaliation is not possible

The victim tried to withdraw some of his earnings after seeing his account multiply substantially on the trading app

Nevertheless, he was faced with several obstacles, such as a frozen account

In seeking the support of the customer care, he was informed to add money to pay the government in terms of tax and handling charges

It was at this stage that he knew that he had been a victim of an advanced crypto-fraud.

Police issue Cryptocurrency fraud warning

The victim reported the scam to the national cybercrime portal after he discovered it. The case is registered by the police under the Information Technology Act and Section 318 (cheating)

The government has cautioned citizens about the increasing cases of cryptocurrency fraud, especially those targeting people on chat apps such as Telegram

Another trick adopted by scammers, which has also been noted by the police, is that they usually pretend to contact people on some false pretext, and then they try to lure them to invest in places, with the help of establishing a false relationship.

The case of the victim acts as a warning to others in India, where crypto scams are increasingly high

Governments are still reminding their citizens that they should be careful and avoid unverified crypto-investment options.