Kerala Man Duped of ₹25 Lakh in Fake Facebook Loan Scam, Cyber Police Begin Probe

A Haripad man lost ₹25 lakh in a fake Facebook loan scam posing as Bajaj Finserv. Fraudsters used WhatsApp and Signal to demand fees and fake recovery charges. Cyber police have launched an investigation.

A man from Haripad in Alappuzha has been cheated out of a massive ₹25,30,028. The fraudsters trapped him with a fake Facebook ad that promised a low-interest personal loan. The victim, 46-year-old Premkumar from Pallippad, fell for the huge financial scam. The cyber police have now filed a case and started an investigation.

The whole incident began on January 27. Premkumar saw a fake advertisement on Facebook, which looked like it was from the well-known company Bajaj Finserv. He applied for a loan of ₹3 lakh. Soon after, the scammers contacted him, pretending to be executives from the company. They used various mobile numbers to send him WhatsApp messages and make voice calls. They told him he needed to pay a 'processing fee' to get his loan approved.

Loan Fraud in Kerala

After losing the initial amount, Premkumar tried to back out. But the scammers came back with a new story. They promised they could use 'cyber help' to recover his lost money. This time, they contacted him on the Signal app. They convinced him that they had successfully 'hacked' and recovered his money, and had even invested it in the stock market. To withdraw this so-called recovered money, they said he had to pay more for 'tax' and 'clearance charges'. They kept demanding more money in multiple instalments.

Between January 28 and April 18, Premkumar made 127 transfers to the scammers. The money was sent from his accounts at the SBI Vallappuzha branch and the Indian Overseas Bank Haripad branch. He finally realised he had been cheated when he received neither the loan nor his money back.