In June, chef Sumit Kumar of Delhi — working in Uttarakhand and investing for his daughter’s education — clicked a Facebook like that sparked a devastating scam. He was lured into a “wealth-management platform” impersonating Karan Bhagat and his firm 360 ONE WAM, uploaded PAN and Aadhaar, and watched fake returns climb on a cloned website. Within weeks he invested ₹38 lakh — borrowing money and even taking a gold loan.

When he attempted to withdraw, he was asked to pay a ₹51 lakh “service fee”, realising too late that the site was fraud-rigged. Money had already split across thousands of mule accounts — making retrieval nearly impossible. The Director of the scam, according to cyber-experts, is an AI-powered impersonator capable of cloning voices, brand identities and websites with eye-watering realism.

This case sits atop one of India’s largest recent digital-investment crimes: approx. 30,000 victims lost ₹1,500 crore in six months. The article maps how the trick works: social-media bait → fake-advisor → clone-website → mules → disappear. Investigation delays and layered money-movement mean most go unrecovered. In short: one “like” became a life-altering risk. The message: check twice, research thoroughly and don’t chase returns you can’t withdraw.