The work-from-home scam has become comman way for scammers to cheat people. In the past few months, thousands of individuals have lost lakhs after falling for the lucrative offer of working and earning extra money from home. Cases are being reported from all around the country. Recently, a man from Moraiya, Ahmedabad became the victim of this online scam and ended up losing Rs 40 lakh to scammers.
In a recently reported case by TOI, Devang Chauhan who works as a 3D designer lost Rs 40 lakh after falling for a fake offer of earning easy money. On April 21, Chauhan reportedly received a message from an unknown number about a part-time job on Whatsapp. To find out more about it, he promptly called on the given number where the person, on the other hand, offered him a job of liking and promoting some YouTube videos. He also promised the victim to offer good money for liking the videos.
‘Victim in his complaint revealed that the caller on the other side instructed him to like three videos every hour and subscribe to the respective YouTube channels for which he would get Rs 50 each. “I received the first payment of Rs 150 in my account and was added to a Telegram group of around 166 persons where everyone was happy about making easy money,” he said.
Before starting the task, the victim revealed that he was asked to pay a prepaid fee of Rs 1,500. However, the fee was later reimbursed to him, along with an additional remuneration of Rs 400, after completing the initial task. In total, he received Rs 1,900, which covered the cost of his prepaid fee and the extra earnings. However, after making his next payment of Rs 2,050, Chauhan signed up for bigger tasks but did not receive a single paisa in return.
However, after completing some video liking tasks, the victim was then offered other tasks that promised higher earnings. “I received several calls from women who identified themselves as Jahanvi Singh, Mona, Rosana, and Lucy. They encouraged me to take up bigger tasks and even created a website for their company where they registered the tasks I had completed and updated my payment details,” the victim further revealed.
Believing it to be legitimate and hoping to earn more money, the victim agreed to undertake the tasks and was added as a member of other similar Telegram groups. In all the tasks, he ended up paying around Rs 30 lakh to receive more tasks. However, he didnot received any money in his bank account.
When the victim tried to withdraw the money, the scammers blocked his account. “I was given the final task of reviewing a crypto currency firm. But I did not receive my money. They said that I had clicked a ‘thumbs down’ icon which meant a negative review, and therefore my payment got blocked,” he added.
Not only that, the scammers further blackmailed him to pay taxes and extracted Rs 11 lakh more under the guise of taxes to release his payment.
Later, upon realizing he had been scammed, the victim filed a complaint at the police station. While the case is under investigation, it is advised that everyone be cautious of any scheme that seems too good to be true in terms of earning money. The cyber cell is also warning citizens to be aware of viral scams and urging them to remain vigilant and cautious.
