Lost money following an influencer? Here is what accountable advice looks like
If a YouTube or Telegram tip cost you money, you are not careless and you are not alone. SEBI's own orders describe this pattern again and again. This page explains why the person you followed owed you nothing, where to report what happened, and how to check that the next person you listen to can actually be held responsible.
Published 6 September 2026 · Potoos Research Services
The short answer. An unregistered tipster owes you nothing. There is no registration they can lose, no conduct rules they can break, no limit on what they charge, and no complaint route you can use. A SEBI-registered Research Analyst has all four. That is what being answerable actually means. Before you follow anyone again, spend five minutes on SEBI's own register. If they are not on it, nothing else about them matters.
What happened to you has a documented pattern
The tips business is not a grey area that regulators have missed. SEBI has been acting against it in public for years, and its orders read like case studies of how followers lose money.
The channel that traded against its own followers
In January 2022, SEBI passed an interim order against six people who ran a Telegram channel called bullrun2017. It had more than 35,000 subscribers when SEBI looked at it. The method in the order is worth reading slowly. First the operators bought a lot of shares in small companies. Then they posted messages telling the channel the price was about to jump. Then they sold their own shares to the followers who rushed in. The followers were not the audience. They were the buyers the operators needed.
SEBI's final order in that matter followed in April 2023. What matters for you is not what happened to those six people. It is that a channel can look generous, confident and free while the whole thing only makes money when you buy what the operator wants to sell.
The trading school that was an advisory in disguise
In February 2025, SEBI passed an urgent interim order against a well-known trading school, its owners and related firms. SEBI's initial finding was that what they sold as courses and mentoring, partly through private Telegram channels, was really investment advice and research analyst work without registration. SEBI ordered about Rs 53.67 crore of what it treated as unlawful gains to be frozen. It also asked them to explain why more than Rs 104 crore collected in fees should not be paid back, and refunds to the students were among the steps proposed.
Notice the packaging. It was not sold as "stock tips". It was sold as education, a community and mentoring. That is exactly why the registration check matters more than the label. What something calls itself is marketing. What the register says it is allowed to do is the law.
The groups that were never about the market at all
The third kind is plain fraud. India TV's technology desk described how it works in January 2026. A 38-year-old woman in Mumbai lost about Rs 3.8 lakh to a Telegram "trading group". It began by asking for tiny amounts, Rs 120 to Rs 500. It paid out small "profits" to build her trust. It filled the group with fake profit screenshots. Then it asked for bigger and bigger transfers, into UPI IDs and bank accounts that kept changing, and then went silent. No trade was ever placed. The market was only the story.
Why the influencer owed you nothing
Here is the uncomfortable legal truth. When you followed an unregistered tipster, nobody in that arrangement had any duty to look after your money.
- No registration to lose. A registered analyst's licence is their livelihood, and it can be suspended or cancelled. An anonymous channel admin risks a username.
- No conduct rules. SEBI's advertisement code, effective 1 May 2023, forbids registered analysts from publishing past performance or promising returns. An influencer flashing profit screenshots is not breaking their rules. They never had any.
- No fee cap. A registered Research Analyst may not charge a family more than Rs 1,51,000 a year. A "VIP group" can charge whatever the story extracts.
- No grievance route. Against a registered intermediary you can escalate to SEBI SCORES and the SMART ODR portal. Against an anonymous admin you have a blocked chat.
Almost every tips channel carries a line like "for educational purposes only, not investment advice". See it for what it is. They want the benefit of giving advice without the duties that come with it. A message with a share name, an entry price and a target is a recommendation, whatever the caption says. The February 2025 order shows SEBI seeing straight through exactly this trick. A disclaimer protects the sender. It does nothing at all for you.
None of this means every influencer is a fraud. Some are honest people sharing an opinion. But from inside the audience, an honest opinion with nobody answerable behind it looks exactly the same as a scheme built to take your money. The only thing that tells them apart before you pay is the register. It is also worth seeing your loss differently. You did not fail at picking shares. You trusted someone who had set the whole thing up so that your trust could never be enforced.
If you have lost money: report it, in the right place
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Preserve everything first
Screenshots of the channel and messages, payment records, UPI IDs, account numbers, phone numbers, links. Channels get deleted; your records are the evidence.
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Fraud by an unregistered person: file a cybercrime complaint
Report it on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in, run by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which takes financial fraud complaints, or call the cybercrime helpline 1930. Speed matters for any hope of freezing the money trail.
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Conduct by a registered intermediary: use SCORES
If the person or firm turns out to be SEBI-registered, complain through the firm's published grievance route first, then escalate to SEBI SCORES or SMART ODR. This is the route that exists precisely because registration creates obligations.
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Be honest with yourself about recovery
Reporting is the right thing to do. It feeds the enforcement that protects the next person. But getting back money that has already moved is slow, and it is never certain. If someone calls and promises to recover your losses for a fee up front, treat that as round two of the same scam. It is a common follow-up.
What to demand from anyone you follow next
You can check this in minutes. Look for five things. A registration number starting with INH that you have searched yourself on SEBI's register, using our four-step guide. A name and city on that register that match the website in front of you. Fees that stay under the legal cap. A written way to complain. And calls that give you an entry, a stop-loss, targets and the reasoning, instead of urgency and screenshots. We have also published a ten-question checklist to put to any advisory service, ours included, and an explanation of how a proper record is kept, and why none of it appears on a public page.
Run all of it on us before you pay us anything. That is what the checks are for.
Common questions
The influencer had lakhs of followers. Does that not prove anything?
Only that a lot of people are watching, and an audience can be bought. The Telegram channel in SEBI's January 2022 order had more than 35,000 subscribers while, according to the order, its operators were selling their own shares to those followers. A big following tells you about marketing. Only the register tells you whether anyone owes you a duty.
They called it education, not advice. Does that change anything?
The label does not change what you were actually given. In its February 2025 interim order, SEBI's initial finding was that a fee-charging trading school running tip-style Telegram channels was really doing investment advice and research analyst work without registration. What counts is what you were actually given, and whether the person giving it was registered to do so.
Can SEBI get my money back?
SEBI orders can impound unlawful gains and propose refunds, as the February 2025 order did, but that is a legal process measured in years and outcomes are never assured. File the reports anyway: at cybercrime.gov.in or on 1930 for fraud, and through SCORES for registered intermediaries. And treat anyone who contacts you promising recovery for an upfront fee as a second scam.
How do I check whether someone is actually registered?
Search their registration number on SEBI's public register of Research Analysts. Then check that the name and city on the register match the website or channel in front of you. If the number returns nothing, or returns a different name, that is your answer. Our four-step guide walks through it, and it is written so you can run it on us.