Bengaluru techie loses Rs 17 lakh in 24 hours in part-time work-from-home fraud

BENGALURU: Beware of WhatsApp messages offering work-from-home part-time jobs. A 27-year-old software engineer from the city recently lost Rs 17 lakh in 24 hours to cybercriminals who lured him with such a job offer.
Arjun (name changed), a resident of Kammanahalli, told East CEN Crime police in his complaint that he lost money between 10am on April 10 and 10am the following day.
On April 10, he received a WhatsApp message from 8144647332 from a person identifying herself as Shamika and offering him a well-paying part-time work-from-home job. As Arjun showed interest in the offer, she asked him to join a Telegram group. She sent him a link with the ID name ‘Shabana Sharma (Receptionist)'. She asked him to fill in his personal details on the link provided and added him to a daily task group on Telegram, where he was to complete scheduled tasks. Initially, he just had to click on a few links they sent, like them and review them. For each task, he was paid Rs 75. After every two tasks, there was a welfare task, where he had to deposit some money to get a commission for the deposited amount.
After paying him for a few tasks, involving smaller amounts Shamika managed to convince him he could earn more by getting into trading. She shared a link to a trading website for registration.
She asked him to deposit Rs 1,000 for the first welfare task, and he received Rs 1,400 in return. For the second welfare task, he deposited Rs 5,000 and got Rs 7,250.
A mentor named Sanya Mehta @Mehta096 was assigned to guide him. To take the third welfare task, he had to deposit Rs 15,000 as the recharge amount. After he paid the money, he was directed to an instructor, Aacharya. He was added to a group named ‘10/04{15000}ATHEVA Task Group', where members boasted about their profits and shared fake screenshots of amounts credited to their accounts. After he transferred the money, he was asked to send another Rs 15,000 for the settlement. He was later asked to pay Rs 50,000 for the second order to get more profit. After that, they made him believe a system error had occurred while he was completing the task, and to resolve it, he was made to pay Rs 1.5 lakh. To recover his credit score, he had to pay Rs 3.5 lakh.
After he transferred the money to different bank accounts and digital payment apps, he was asked to contact Isha Sharma, a manager. Citing various reasons, including the charges to recover his blocked account, they tricked him into paying Rs 11.3 lakh more. After he transferred the money, they paid him only Rs 1,888. Later, they asked him to pay Rs 3.6 lakh as tax to withdraw all the money and make the final settlement. Arjun suspected it was a fraud as they kept asking him for more money and rushed to police.
A case was registered under Information Technology Act and BNS section 318 (cheating) on April 15.