Mumbai: A 35-year-old woman who works as a project manager in a private company has fallen prey to pre-paid online task fraud and ended up losing ₹32.88 lakh in 22 transactions.
According to the Thane police, on December 4, the victim, a resident of Thane, received a WhatsApp message from an unknown mobile number offering her a part-time online job of giving online ratings. The said message contained a link and directed the victim to a Telegram page. Further, the victim was informed that for every task if the rating is given, more profit will be made.
Victim made to fill personal info, bank account details on Telegram link
The victim was made to fill in her personal information and bank account details on a Telegram link. She then completed several prepaid online tasks and transferred money to the accounts sent by the scammers. She was also able to see her profits and earnings on a web link. However, when she tried to transfer the profit to her bank account, she was unable to do so.
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Later when she confronted the scammers, she was asked to play more tasks. Realising that her money was stuck, she kept on playing more and more such prepaid tasks. After a few days, the victim learnt that the Telegram link she had been using to perform online tasks became non-functional and she did not get any money from the tasks.
In 14 days, the woman had lost ₹32.88 lakh. The victim then approached the police and got an offence registered on Thursday.
The police have registered a case under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code and 66C (identity theft), 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
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