Mumbai Financial Advisor Falls Victim To Cyber Fraud That Offered Online Job Opportunity, Loses Rs 9.35 Lakh; How It All Happened

Cybercrime has been a menace for many and in what seems to be another cyber fraud incident a Mumbai man who is said to be a financial advisor has been duped a huge sum of money in the name of an online earning opportunity.

Mumbai: If you think that online platforms are safe then you might be having a very wrong notion. Nothing is safe nowadays especially when it comes to online platforms, there is a list of cases where people are scammed by digital frauds and scammers. Similar is a case of a man from Mumbai who has fallen victim of online fraud and lost Rs. 9.35 lakh.

The 40-year-old victim, a financial advisor, lost the huge money after clicking on a Telegram link send by a person who offered him a part-time job. The victim was reportedly contacted by an unknown person who offered him a part-time job of rating hotels and send him some links. As soon as he clicked on a link to start the work, he lost money from his bank account connected to his UPI ID.

The trap

On June 13, the victim received a message from a woman saying that she was an HR from an international company, she lured him that he could earn Rs 150 if he clicked on a link and gave ratings to three hotels, according to a mid-day report.

As the victim mentioned his name in the message and clicked on the link, a Telegram app page appeared where he was asked to give his UPI ID. When he completed the task, Rs 150 was deposited in his account. He was then asked to give a review for more hotels and he earned Rs 900.

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The next day, he was given the task to get almost double the amount he invested; for Rs 2000, got Rs 2800 within hours back to his account.

The next day he was given three more tasks and was asked to complete the task by investing Rs 5000 and 32000, and 45000 and was lured that he would get Rs 7000, 45000, and 98000. Trusting the process, he completed these tasks and made the aforementioned investments but did not receive a single penny.

He was asked to invest Rs 2 lakh to get back the earlier invested amount and thus he went on to invest in the hope of getting back the money invested earlier and eventually lost Rs 9.37 lakh. Realizing the fraud, he approached the Dahisar police station and registered his complaint.

The police registered an FIR under section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC and section 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.

It is important to mention that this is not the first time that such a scam has come to fore, earlier too people have been scammed by similar tactics by the cyber thugs. The are some case where the scamsters threat, blackmail the victim with Income Tax raids, fake drug recovery case. They also pose to be investigating officers in the matter.

NOTE: With victims losing huge sums of money online, we recommend you not to trust any unknown person on any social media platforms who ask you to do some specific actions regarding money. Make sure to never pay any commission on the assurance that you will get the money back.

Never share confidential information such as passwords or UPI details and OTPs with anyone.

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