A 61-year-old retired Bhilai Steel Plant employee has lost ₹45,18,998 in an elaborate investment fraud that exploited the names and photographs of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and philanthropist Sudha Murty to convince him a fraudulent trading platform was genuine. Police in Bhilai have arrested 24-year-old Vishal Nagle from Betul, Madhya Pradesh, in connection with the case, though the investigation into the wider network remains ongoing.
The case is a striking example of how systematically Indian fraudsters have learned to weaponise public trust in familiar faces, a tactic that has grown considerably more effective as the underlying technology used to fabricate convincing endorsements has improved. Jayant Bagchi, the victim, is a former Bhilai Steel Plant employee who also served in the Indian Army, a background that makes his eventual entrapment a pointed illustration of how sophisticated these schemes have become.
A Carefully Staged Escalation
Bagchi’s ordeal began on March 10, when he encountered an investment advertisement on Facebook prominently featuring well-known public figures, an association that lent the scheme an air of legitimacy he had no immediate reason to question. After registering through the link provided, a woman identifying herself as Kritika contacted him and, citing his status as a senior citizen, asked him to pay ₹18,998 as a registration fee, a modest opening sum designed to establish a pattern of compliance.
What followed was a carefully sequenced escalation involving multiple handlers, each introducing a new pretext for larger deposits. A man identifying himself as Siddharth Vipul, posing as an account manager, claimed the operation spanned the UK, the US, Japan and Australia. Subsequent deposits of ₹1 lakh, then ₹5 lakh twice over, pushed Bagchi deeper into the scheme, before a third contact, Karan Taneja, invoked geopolitical tensions involving Iran, the US and Israel to convince him gold prices were poised to rise, prompting a further ₹25 lakh deposit on a single day.
Fabricated Profits and an Escalating Withdrawal Tax
By the time Bagchi had made additional payments toward oil trading, his total deposits across multiple bank accounts reached ₹45,18,998. The platform displayed a combined balance including a purported profit of $271,275.68, a figure calculated to look precise and therefore credible. When he attempted to withdraw the funds, the operators cited cross-border transfer delays before introducing a new condition entirely, a demand for fifteen per cent tax on the dollar profit, amounting to more than ₹34 lakh.
When Bagchi pushed back and asked that the tax be deducted from the account balance rather than paid upfront, the demand was reduced to ₹12 lakh, with a promise of partial release once payment cleared. It was only when he was instructed to route the final RTGS transfer to a bank account in Arunachal Pradesh that suspicion overtook him, prompting him to report the fraud to the national cybercrime helpline 1930 and alert his bank.
Celebrity Impersonation as an Industrialised Fraud Tactic
The Bhilai case fits a pattern that has intensified sharply across India over the past two years, as fraudsters have moved from simply attaching celebrity names and photographs to advertisements towards deploying AI-generated deepfake videos featuring synthesised voices and likenesses of prominent figures. Sudha Murty herself was targeted by a deepfake video late last year in which a synthetic recreation of her voice promoted an investment scheme promising twenty to thirty times returns, prompting her to publicly warn citizens about what she described as AI combined with cunning minds behind such fraud. Sachin Tendulkar has separately and repeatedly had to publicly disavow deepfake videos falsely showing him endorsing gaming and investment applications, including one that fabricated claims about his daughter’s involvement.
The consistency with which the same handful of trusted public figures, spanning business, cricket and government, are invoked across unrelated fraud cases nationwide suggests a deliberate and repeatable playbook rather than isolated opportunism. A Bengaluru chartered accountant lost ₹23.20 lakh in a similar scheme built around deepfake videos of Mukesh Ambani, Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty, underscoring how interchangeable the celebrity element has become across otherwise near-identical fraud structures.
Tracing the Money Beyond a Single Arrest
Bhilai Nagar Police, having registered the case under Section 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, traced Nagle to Betul through examination of bank transactions, mobile numbers and other digital evidence, recovering a chequebook, Aadhaar card and mobile phone allegedly used in the fraud. Investigators are now working to establish where the ₹45.19 lakh was ultimately transferred, how many people were involved in the broader network, and whether Nagle’s arrest represents a meaningful disruption or merely one link in a longer chain of operators.
