No end to digital arrest scam, now senior citizen cheated of Rs 35 crore in Mumbai

New Delhi: A 72-year-old Mumbai man has alleged that he lost Rs 35 crore in a massive trading scam after a brokerage firm carried out years of unauthorised transactions using his and his wife’s accounts. The senior citizen, Bharat Harakchand Shah, says Globe Capital Market Limited manipulated him with false assurances, took full control of his portfolio and hid mounting losses by sending fabricated profit statements for four years. 

Shah, who along with his wife manages a low-cost guest house for cancer patients in Parel, inherited a sizable share portfolio after his father’s death in 1984. With no practical understanding of the stock market, the couple never traded their holdings for decades. That changed in 2020 when Shah opened trading and Demat accounts with Globe Capital on a friend’s advice and transferred the inherited shares to the firm.

Shah says the firm’s representatives initially maintained regular contact, offering attractive assurances and telling him he would not need to invest additional money as his shares could be used as collateral. They also promised "personal guides” to help manage his portfolio. Two employees named Akshay Baria and Karan Siroya were then assigned to handle his accounts, gradually taking full control.

According to the FIR, the employees began by directing him over daily calls about which orders to place and later started visiting his home. They allegedly operated from their own laptops and guided him through SMS and email verifications. Shah says he unknowingly granted them access by entering every OTP and responding to every message they prompted. He claims he was kept in the dark about what was actually happening in his accounts.

For four years, Shah received clean annual statements showing "profits,” giving him no reason to suspect wrongdoing. The alleged fraud surfaced only in July 2024, when Globe Capital’s Risk Management Department informed him: "You and your wife have a debit balance of Rs 35 crore in your accounts. You must pay it immediately, or your shares will be sold."

Shocked, Shah visited the company and learned that extensive unauthorised trading had taken place, including the sale of shares worth crores and numerous circular trades that pushed the accounts into deep losses. Under pressure to protect his remaining assets, he sold off his remaining holdings and cleared the entire Rs 35 crore liability before shifting whatever shares were left to another firm.

When he later downloaded the original trading statements from Globe’s website, he found major inconsistencies compared to the profit statements emailed to him. He also discovered that the company had responded to multiple NSE notices using his name — without ever informing him. Calling it an "organised financial fraud,” Shah has lodged an FIR at Vanrai police station. The matter, registered under IPC sections 409 and 420, has been transferred to the Economic Offences Wing for investigation.