Scam: 58-year-old man loses Rs 31 lakh in online scam: Telegram, YouTube likes and more, here’s how he was duped

The work from home scams seem to be still claiming innocent victims. Similar to the app based Chinese investment fraud that involved Rs 903 crore hawala cum money; a 58-year-old retired insurance company employee was duped of Rs 31 lakh in a part time job scam. The complainant had invested his pension and gratuity in this scam. The online scam was quite similar to the one that has claimed several other citizens across the country. It involved multiple tasks that ranged from liking YouTube videos to even opening a crypto wallet. The west region cybercrime police station has registered the case.

Started from a telegram message
The online work from home scam began with a Telegram message asking the man if he was interested in a part time job. After he agreed, the accused began chatting with him. Like in all such cases, the cyber criminals initially sent him YouTube videos and asked him to like them, take their screenshots and send them on the same Telegram number. The victim also got paid for these tasks.

Few days later, he was added to a ‘Value Added Task’ group where he was introduced to a group admin and told that he would guide him. To make it sound convincing, he was assured that if he finds it fine he can ask for a value-added task from the admin. In one task, the man was asked to like, share and send screenshots of different videos in the group. This was by a website link where he was asked to create his wallet for financial transactions.
According to the Police, he was then asked to open a crypto wallet on an exchange, buy USDT and send it to another wallet provided by the accused. USDT, also known as Tether, is a popular crypto coin that has a value equivalent to that of a single US dollar and is backed by dollar deposits.
Money showed in Crypto account initially
The accused gave the man several tasks to complete. The payment of these tasks and his investments and profit showed in the wallet that he had created. However, when he tried to transfer this money to his bank account, he was not able to. Upon inquiring, the accused asked him to invest more. Few days later, the wallet link suddenly disappeared.
Police has frozen nine bank accounts
The cybercrime police have frozen nine bank accounts suspected to have been operated by the accused. These accounts have Rs 20 lakh in them. While the crime took place for 10 to 15 days in February, the complainant approached the police much later.