Seeking to capitalise on the stock market rally, fraudsters are flooding gullible investors with unsolicited offers promising huge gains, prompting regulator Sebi to consider a closer coordination with banking and telecom regulators to check this menace.
These offers are mostly being made through SMSes, WhatsApp and various social media platforms, wherein names of some established brokerage houses and exchanges are also being misused.
While the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has already taken action in several such cases so far, it is investigating a number of others involving similar activities, a senior official said. To check the menace, the regulator is also looking at a closer coordination with its peers from the banking and telecom sectors -- namely the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), they added. Typically, Sebi depends on the call data records from the telecom companies and the financial transaction statements from the banks in its probe against such cases of frauds, where investors are lured into depositing money into designated bank accounts with promise of huge returns.
Generally, the gullible investors are first lured by these scamsters through SMSes, WhatsApp messages and posts on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, after which they are given certain bank account numbers to deposit money. The mobile numbers and URls, as also the bank account numbers, become the mainstay for the investigation by Sebi, ownership details of which help the regulator reach the perpetrators of such manipulative activities.