Navi Mumbai Auto Driver Loses Crores in Online Gaming Scam
In a disturbing case of cyber fraud linked to online gaming and betting platforms, a 25-year-old auto-rickshaw driver from Navi Mumbai has allegedly lost ₹1.26 crore after being lured into a high-return investment trap. The victim reportedly raised the money by selling ancestral land and his parents’ gold ornaments.
The complainant was allegedly drawn into an online gaming platform that promised attractive returns through games such as Teen Patti, Casino, and other betting-based formats. Investigators said the victim was initially allowed to withdraw small amounts, creating a false sense of legitimacy and encouraging him to invest larger sums over time.
Officials stated that between March 2024 and April 2026, the victim transferred a total of ₹1.26 crore in multiple transactions to several bank accounts allegedly linked to the fraud network. Each transaction was structured in a way that appeared legitimate, making the scam difficult to detect in its early stages.
The investigation revealed that the scam specifically operated under the guise of an online gaming portal named “KheloStar”. The fraud syndicate convinced the 25-year-old driver, a resident of Morave village in the Ulwe node of Panvel taluka, that the platform was a fully legal, listed, and secure corporate venture. To gain his complete trust, administrators engineered a series of successful micro-withdrawals at the beginning of his tenure. This tactical compliance allowed the driver to move small profits directly back into his retail bank account, masking the overarching trap and severely blurring his perception of the financial risk involved.
The victim was a Project Affected Person (PAP) entitled to land provisions under regional rehabilitation programs. To feed the rising capital demands simulated on the application’s digital dashboard, he took the extreme step of selling his prime CIDCO-allotted plot in the Ulwe node, which had been cleared under the 12.5% compensation scheme. When those initial real estate liquidations were completely exhausted by structural betting losses, the driver pawned and sold his parents’ ancestral gold jewelry to secure additional capital tranches. In total, the young motorist transferred exactly ₹1,26,86,778 over a multi-month period into distinct mule bank accounts assigned dynamically by the app’s handlers.
The fraud escalated dramatically as the platform’s synthetic dashboard continued to display highly inflated, fictitious winning balances, reaching upwards of multiple crores. This visual misdirection effectively manipulated the victim into keeping his capital active within the card matrix. The mechanism collapsed entirely when the driver attempted to liquidate his core winnings. The platform immediately locked his profile, froze his interface, and cut off all customer service pathways. Realizing the displayed capital was entirely inaccessible, the victim approached the regional enforcement cells.
Following a formal complaint, the Navi Mumbai Cyber Police Station registered a comprehensive FIR against the unidentified gang of scamsters, explicitly naming the platform’s directors, operations managers, customer care entities, and the network of mule account holders used to siphon the funds. Senior Police Inspector Vishal Patil confirmed that cases have been logged under relevant punitive sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for cheating, criminal breach of trust, and common intention, alongside stringent sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act and the Maharashtra Prevention of Gambling Act. Specialized tracing units are currently mapping the technical pathways and IP histories of the payment gateways to isolate the primary orchestrators.
