A 53-year-old Mumbai man who sold his flat for Rs 1.27 crore, lost the money to cyber fraudsters while looking for investment opportunities. The fraudsters reportedly promised him sky-high returns in a part-time job they offered him.
According to a complaint filed with the police, the man received a message from a woman on messaging app Telegram about a part-time job on February 9. The woman said she would share links to movies and hotels and he would have to rate them, take a screenshot and send it back to the same number.
According to a TOI report, the man earned Rs 7,000 initially from the work but lost Rs 1.27 crore by transferring it to the fraudsters’ account over a span of many days.
When the man showed interest in the job, the woman sent a link and asked him to share his bank account details with her. Afterwards, she shared credentials for his e-wallet and asked him to deposit Rs 10,000 in an account.
“The woman sent him a link to a website that specialises in having information in the hotel industry. He gave a rating to the website content, took a screenshot and sent it to the accused. Soon, he received Rs 17,372 in his account,” a police officer was quoted by TOI as saying.
The police officer further said that the woman again sent him a link to give a rating to a movie and asked him to deposit Rs 32,000 in her account. The man complied and earned Rs 55,000 as profit in his e-wallet.
He then again sent Rs 50,000 to her account. However, this time, the woman said that due to some technical glitch in the link, he would have to pay again and so he made a payment of Rs 55,000 to her account once again.
“On May 17, he deposited Rs 48 lakh in bank account numbers provided by the woman and completed all tasks given by her through the links. The profit in his wallet was shown as Rs 60 lakh. The woman told him that if he wanted to get Rs 60 lakh from his wallet to his account he would have to pay an additional Rs 30 lakh. On May 18, the man in various transactions, transferred Rs 76 lakh to accounts given by the woman,” the police said.
However, when the man did not receive any money after making all payments, he confronted the woman, who, in turn, demanded more money from him. It was then he approached the police and lodged an FIR.
During the investigation, the police found that the money was transferred to eight accounts of banks in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.
“Total cheating amount as per FIR is around Rs 1.27 crore The crime took place between February and May this year. We have frozen eight bank accounts used by the accused,” the police officer stated.
Police said that the fraudsters lure people by transferring small amounts of money into their accounts and later dupe them after making them invest big amounts and vanishing.
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