The 57-year-old retired woman was duped to Rs 3.75 trillion by a con man who allegedly used her to invest in an online trading platform using AI-generated deepfake videos from spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, police said Thursday.
The woman, a resident of CV Ramannagar, claimed she was unaware of Deepfake technology in Sadhguru's AI-generated video, while scrolling through the YouTube video, they said.
In her complaints, the woman claimed that she had come across Sadhguru's “AI-generated YouTube video” on February 25, while watching a YouTube video.
Believing that the link provided in the description of the suspicious video was authentic, she clicked on it and was later contacted by someone named Waleed B, FIR said.
According to FIR, Waleed reached out to her through multiple UK-based mobile phone numbers and asked her to download the Mirrox application.
He also conducted her trading lessons via the Zoom app. Another person identified as Michael C gave a lesson when Waleed was unavailable.
From February 25th to April 23rd, the woman invested a total of 3,75,72,121 from her bank account, adding that she invested in what was offered through the suspected application of the trading platform.
The woman noticed that she was being fooled when she tried to withdraw her profits and approached police with complaints almost five months after the incident, a senior police officer said.
“On the basis of the complaint, we registered a lawsuit on September 9th under the relevant section of the IT Act and section 318(4) of BNS (fraud). The issue is under investigation,” he said.
However, officers said it would be difficult to recover lost money, but they have coordinated with the bank to freeze accounts where the money was suspected of being transferred by the complainant, as the fraudsters are demanding.
