Police say the Ahmedabad case fits an organized India-wide pattern in which fraudsters use matrimonial or social platforms to build trust, funnel victims to fake crypto sites and then block withdrawals with bogus fees.
A 33-year-old CFO in Ahmedabad has lost $81,700, or ₹78.99 lakh, in a cryptocurrency investment fraud that police say began with a match on the Sangam matrimonial app and evolved into a fake trading scheme run through WhatsApp and a bogus investment website. The complainant, Hardik Chandrakantbhai Soni from Vadaj, said he downloaded the app in March 2025, matched with a profile named Harshitha Gondawith on May 8, and was gradually persuaded to invest after she claimed to have made large crypto gains and bought a house in central Berlin. Police said Soni was directed to register on m[.]bitcoin-on[.]com, where he provided personal details including his driving licence information. A customer support agent then told him to transfer money to a rotating set of bank accounts, with each payment later reflected on the dashboard as a USDT credit. Deposits were made between May 8, 2025 and January 26, 2026, with individual installments ranging from ₹10,000 to ₹10 lakh. The platform showed rising balances and profits, but when Soni tried to withdraw his principal and the claimed gains, the operators demanded additional payments described as taxes, processing fees and verification costs. Some of those extra payments were made, but no money was returned. He first complained through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal before an FIR was registered with Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Police. The complaint identifies the matrimonial profile as Harshitha-FS64217032 and alleges it managed the WhatsApp number and the wider scam operation. Investigators said the case appears linked to an organized network using the same script on victims across India. Similar incidents cited in the report include a civil contractor identified as Ramesh, who lost about ₹1.67 crore after meeting a woman calling herself Priyanka on a matrimonial site, and Ashok Vijayvargiya, a chartered accountant and Chief Returning Officer of the Madhya Pradesh Chamber of Commerce, who was allegedly defrauded of ₹21.06 crore by a social-media contact using the name Divya. Cybercrime expert and former IPS officer Prof. Triveni Singh said criminals favor matrimonial and social platforms because trust is established before money enters the conversation. He urged users to conduct their own checks before sending funds to any investment platform and said flashy property videos, screenshots and claims of high returns should be treated as warning signs.