- This topic has 39 replies, 22 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 3 months ago by
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UWhat happened:
I was added to some whatsapp group which apparently gives stock advice. The moderator introduced themselves as from “HSBC Securities”. I waited for a few days to see what’s happening. There is a moderator called “Rajiv Jain” in the group that everyone calls “Professor”. He tells which stocks to buy and sell. The weird thing is that he advices Upper Circuit stocks and “Block trades”. If you know anything about stocks, you would know that you can’t purchase Upper circuit stocks. And block trades are just direct discount on stocks! He says to buy them and sell next day. All the shares are held 1 day, some special trades two days. They emphasize to sell on time and not hold as it is against rules. This is what they say “Please buy today and sell after the opening of the next trading day. It is strictly forbidden to expand profits. Once illegal operations are found, they will be blacklisted and all cooperation will be terminated”. So how do you participate in these trades? You need to open a “Primary Market account” with them it seems and download their app.
Now I did something really stupid, I know. I went ahead, gave them my PAN card, Aadhaar card and downloaded their app from a direct link (not on playstore). So I transfer them 1.75 Lakh (over days and over multiple transactions). Let me tell you how these transactions worked. You contact Customer support (another whatsapp group). You tell them how much you want to transfer and they tell you which bank account to transfer to. The bank accounts change every time because there is a 100 crore limit on them and they need to change accounts every time it seems. They are never HSBC banks, some small banks accounts.
The amount is reflected in the app. Let me tell you about the app. It looks like a legit app, you can see the live stock prices (though they seem to update slowly like every 5 mins). When you buy the stocks, even UC, you are immediately granted the stock and sale is also immediate. There is no setting of buy/sell price, always market. For a few days, I followed the trades, made money on the app. The process of withdrawal is to put a withdrawal request and they will either approve/reject it. To test whether withdrawals are working, I withdrew 1000 Rs, it went fine. Few days later, I withdrew 40k, it also worked fine. So my confidence has grown a bit that this might be legit.
Now, here are the reasons why this sounded legit. All the members on the app are always positive, there is never a negative message, everyone is praising, posting screenshots of their trades, of their profits, of how much they deposited. There are a 100 members in the group. I think it is difficult to have this many co conspirators. At least 20 to 30 different people chat in the group actively. But some people were randomly removed from the group too, don’t know why. And people were posting screenshots and physical receipts of bank transfers for tens of lakhs of rupees. This moderator Rajiv Jain explained what primary account is, why they are able to get block trades (discounted stock) – as they negotiate with companies – apparently the shareholder are unable to sell on market as that would cause stock crash, so they sell to us at discount it seems (But what was the point if we sell the next day anyway). He also daily explains different concepts and during budget, he gave some insights, so they are at least very knowledgeable about financials. They also provided a SEBI registration number: INZ000234533. But there were some suspicious things too. Like the discounts are huge. Initially they started at 6%-7%. Later, 10%, 22%, and recently, 33% discount. All big names, ICICI Lombard – 39% discount, ICICI securities – 51% dicount, HDFC – 33% discount. But you need to buy minimum of 10L to 1 crore for some of them.
Where I got screwed hard: So the third type of trades they do is IPO trading. I was told to apply IPO for Quality Power Electrical Equipment Ltd. Well, I did that. I went to the IPO page, clicked on apply, Weirdly, there is no bidding amount, how many share, nothing. I just got a screen saying submitted. I didn’t think much of it. Now 2 days back, I get a message from customer support saying I won the IPO allotment, and I was allotted 2700 shares at 10.8 Lakh rupees. I don’t have that much money in that app. I open the app to see my money is zero (All 2 Lakh I had was paid for the IPO it seems). I tell them I can’t pay that amount. They reply: “Hello, according to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) “Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements (ICDR) Regulations, 2018″, after the IPO allotment is completed, the allotted investors must pay the full amount according to the allocated amount, otherwise they may face risks such as account freezing and future IPO subscription restrictions.” I had one day to make payment, I obviously didn’t do it.
I registered a cyber crime complaint on 1930 (2 days back).. They took details of my transactions. I get this weird message from cyber cell today: “Dear Sir/ Madam, Status of your Complaint Acknowledgement No. (redacted), dated 19/02/2025, reported on Cyber Crime portal is amount of Rs. 655 has been Put on Hold. Kindly contact your respective Police Station. Regards, National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.” What? Why was my money put on hold? I go to police station, they say to get print out of the cyber crime complaint, but I don’t see any option to get print out of my submitted complaint. Have to go again tomorrow to resolve.
Things got worse: Tonight, I get this message: Since you have not completed the IPO subscription, in order not to affect the listing of the stock, we have repurchased your account. The repurchase terms are as follows:
1. If you are temporarily unable to pay the IPO subscription funds, HSBC Securities will repurchase
2. Since you violated the regulations, your credit score will drop to 75 points after the repurchase, and it can be restored after completing the repayment
3. If you complete the payment within 5 working days, there will be no additional fees. If it exceeds 5 working days, interest will be adjusted according to the current interest rate
This is very scary if real. I asked for where are the terms and conditions? They just send me pics of some documents (which look legit) but they refuse to send online link as apparently there is no such link. I ask for speaking to management or asking for office address. They say they do everything online and I can’t meet management as it is not feasible.
Conclusion I made. This is either a fully scam operation and they are scaring me into sending more money or they are some legitimate financial institution with someone doing illegal activities. If it is the latter – It is really HSBC Securities who are essentially creating false loans with terms and conditions I didn’t accept, I think I am royally F***ED
I am planning on going to police station again and also go to local HSBC branch to maybe find some answers. If anyone has any advice, please suggest. I know I did stupid things.
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CNo offence but you showed real big brain energy. File an FIR what else. Private banks are all part of it. Try finding others who have been scammed like you. Leak it to the press so that the bank branch is pressured as well and so are cops. Otherwise both the parties aren’t going to do shit.See it through
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UDon’t send any S#it to them …
Your next course of action is :- File FIR …go to police station , ask for cyber department and file the complaint.
Next :- contact this guy
https://aseemjuneja.in/Write an email to SEBI & RBI …
Don’t worry , u r fine … Let me know what they say
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UBro.. Can I ask. Why? Just why? Why would you even entertain anything on a random group you’ve been added by some rando?
And aesa kya paise ka lalach hogaya?Chalo anyway.. Ab take some police action ya talk to some news reporter
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S>talk to some news reporter
All that will do is give some story to a reporter, OP won’t get their money back since they clearly transfered it to multiple different accounts, which they for sure emptied to cash.
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CDon’t go to HSBC and make a fool out of yourself. You have been scammed. Accept it. Go to the police station and ask them to file a regular FIR. Also, don’t have high hopes of getting your money back. Consider this a life lesson and move on.
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UI think making a fool out of myself is least of my worries at the moment. My hope is that if the manager or someone there takes me seriously, he also may file some FIR for impersonation or something. If a bank manager files a case, it might be taken seriously by police
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II read these kinds of stories of getting scammed by investing, joining the whatsapp/telegram groups. Initially getting a small profit, then dumping more capital out of greed and then losing whole money. Every week/month there is a story like this in news. Still people keep falling for it. Last week I read that Indians have lost a whopping 12,000 crores to online scams in 2024.
And to my surprise, all educated people are the ones losing huge amounts of money.
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LGranting of stocks happened in the app itself?
Did you check if there was any activity in your demat account?
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RStop playing the blame game. Just because someone took some Bank name doesn’t mean they are the culprit. In the beginning itself before by our stupid act of sharing your personal details you should have checked the authenticity of the call. Basically your Greed for Quick money has landed you in this spot in spite of numerous awareness being created of such scams
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UIt screams scam.
Also, I do not think non payment of ipo actually results in credit score downgrade, due to the fact that ipo payment does not happen on a line of credit.
File an fir and pray that you get some money back. Although so many accounts mean the chance of getting the actual money back is very less.
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UNAL
All the 100 accounts you saw in the group chat are bot accounts. This is a pretty common scam.Can you share the apk? I can look for patterns and try to report the infrastructure involved or add more details of the analysis in public.
I know someone who fell to the same and never recovered the sum they lost. FIR was made but nothing happened.
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ULooks like the scam started only a couple of days back and they already have about 700 potential victim accounts on this app
the app is just like a small web browser tied down to [https://h5.0jxcppji.xyz/](https://h5.0jxcppji.xyz/) which seems to be implemented in a java backend
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NI believe I have received a similar group invite today (never signed up for anything like this), message follows
>If U are investing in stocks，This is the wealth information U cannot miss 💰💰💰
>Mr. Rohit Sharma is a highly respected CFA, known for his profound financial acumen, who generously conducts free stock market knowledge training sessions.He has helped many investors achieve success, bringing a profit of 93% to group members in just the past month.
>
>Seize the opportunity! Click the image link to join the VIP group and instantly get access to stocks that are set to soar by 30%.
There is an image and link attached to this message, which I am unable to copy from WhatsApp
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USame happened with me. In this case I have paid the amount which asked for IPO. Can we be together in this & support each other
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UExactly, what you had described has happened to me like IPO deducting amount for subscribed price(20k) but the difference is to get the subscribed amount Unpaid 1L79k in unsubscribed price within 5 days. They said my credit score will be increased above 75 points later so I couldn’t withdraw even my invested amount. But, when I asked after they freezed account saying investigation is happening and either now I need to recharge 5L or wait for or one month to unfreeze
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UYou didn’t file complaint? And don’t pay them anything more. Take screenshots, phone numbers, account numbers everything as proof and file complaint
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