A senior chartered accountant in Gwalior has lost more than Rs 21 crore in what investigators are calling one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency investment frauds, a scam that began, according to police, with a single WhatsApp message: “Hello… this is Divya speaking.”The victim, Ashok Vijayvargiya (70), is Chief Returning Officer of the Madhya Pradesh Chamber of Commerce and Industries. Police say the fraud unfolded over roughly seven months, between December 2025 and July 2026, and ended with Vijayvargiya losing Rs 21,05,92,000, while being shown a fictitious profit of over Rs 33 crore on what investigators suspect was a fake trading platform.How it startedAccording to the complaint, the first contact came in December 2025 from someone identifying herself as “Divya,” who claimed to be an investment adviser and pitched USDT Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar, as a fast, high-return opportunity. Conversations soon moved off the original number and onto others, including one carrying a US country code. Police say they’re still verifying whether that number is genuine or a virtual one that only appears to originate abroad.Vijayvargiya was sent a link to an online trading portal and helped to set up an account. What followed, police say, is a familiar playbook. His first deposits were small, four transfers of Rs 10,000 each on December 25, followed by roughly Rs 1 lakh routed through a friend’s UPI account. The portal showed these investments turning a profit.Then, on January 7, came the moment investigators say sealed his trust: the fraudsters transferred Rs 1.88 lakh into his actual HDFC Bank account as a “return”, real money, not just a number on a screen. Convinced the platform was legitimate, Vijayvargiya began investing far larger sums, including a Rs 15 lakh RTGS transfer on December 31. Business associates say more than 35 other acquaintances may also have put money into the scheme on his advice.The trap closesAs deposits grew, so did the portal’s reported returns, eventually showing a paper profit of about Rs 33.25 crore. When Vijayvargiya tried to withdraw it, the transaction was blocked. He was told he’d first need to pay Rs 10.84 crore in “income tax” to release the funds. Each subsequent attempt to withdraw triggered a new demand, including, at one point, another Rs 1 crore described as a “risk margin.” It was only then, police say, that he realised the profits may never have existed.A four-layer money trailWhat sets this case apart, investigators say, is the scale and speed with which the stolen money was moved. The Gwalior State Cyber Cell says the funds passed through a four-layer network involving more than 20,000 transactions and accounts stretching from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal and beyond.State Cyber Cell DSP Sanjeev Nayan Sharma said the funds were “transferred through thousands of accounts across the country using a four-layer structure,” and that the team is now focused on the 77 first-layer accounts that directly received the money. Around Rs 2 crore has been frozen so far; the rest, police believe, was rapidly withdrawn, converted, or spent, via ATMs, shopping vouchers, online payments, and cryptocurrency, before it could be traced.Investigators suspect many of the accounts belong not to masterminds but to money mules, who rent out their bank accounts for a commission, alongside shell firms and digital-wallet operators tied to organised cybercrime networks.Vijayvargiya has handed over WhatsApp chats, screenshots and account statements to the Cyber Cell. A case has been registered under Sections 318(4) and 319(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Section 66D of the IT Act, against unidentified accused.Police are now working to trace the WhatsApp numbers, IP addresses and the trading portal’s origins, and to establish where the bulk of the Rs 21 crore ultimately ended up.