A new cyber scam has unravelled in the city where victims who got paid for mundane online tasks such as liking a YouTube channel or posting a positive review on a web portal, were later lured into a dubious enrichment scheme only to end up losing their money.
The cyber crime team investigating the complaint of a victim in Puducherry who lost more than ₹7 lakh in the scam has arrested three persons in Chennai, police said.
The modus operandi is initiated by establishing contact with a potential target via WhatsApp or Telegram with the offer of money without any investment for executing simple online tasks such as liking a YouTube channel, writing a comment on portal or subscribing to certain web content.
A WhatsApp number is provided to those joining the offer and links sent to the victims to complete the tasks. Trust is built when those who join get paid an amount for online assignments, as simple as, say, liking 10 YouTube channels. The fact that there is zero investment and easy money to be made draws unsuspecting persons into the scheme. The more the number of tasks, the higher the pay out.
“At this stage of the scam, depending on the nature of the person and how quickly he responded to the assignments, a range of offers are laid out against making a certain payment towards registration charges for the scheme”, Brijendra Kumar Yadav, SSP (Cyber Crime) told The Hindu.
With those initial paltry payments providing a veneer of credibility, tricksters lull their targets into glossing over the risks of shelling out money to a faceless payee. The subscribers are even sent a bar code to scan that provides a display of their investment and project gain. However, after they make payments, the link would no longer work and panic sets in.
The victims included retirees, private sector employees and even a few doctors. The down payments for offers promising a 10-15% return on investments ranged from ₹10,000 to about ₹30 lakh, police said.
Cyber crime investigators say tracking down perpetrators who operate via WhatsApp and Telegram, multiple locations of use (a WhatsApp number sourced from Meghalaya shows a Chennai use location) and a perplexing array of fake identities on Telegram is an uphill and time consuming task.
“The people who land in the police net are minor cogs in a seemingly gigantic wheel with the IPs used by masterminds using different WhatsApp numbers and fake IDs showing locations such as Hong Kong, Dubai and Nepal”, Keerthi, cyber crime investigating officer said.
The three persons held in this case under section 420 IPC and 66 read with 43 of the Information Technology Act 2000, worked for commissions for getting someone to open a current account that would be used for gaming proceeds and promising rewards or for enlisting online investments.
During investigations, it was found that the alleged account was accessed from Hong Kong. An analysis of the Yes Bank account statement by a team comprising S. Bascarane, Superintendent of Police, B.C Kirtty, Inspector, found that transactions of over ₹4.95 crore were made within four days.
“Cyber crime units of seven States had moved to shut down a single current account used for the fraudulence”, Mr. Kirtty said, pointing to the widespread nature of the scam.
In fact, police suspect that the actual magnitude of fraud could be larger than imagined and more people across States may have fallen prey to such scams. Since January alone, the cyber crime unit in Puducherry has lodged 22 FIRs, frozen 2,800 current accounts and blocked more than 500 mobile numbers. Investigators also noted that lax KYC compliance by some private banks in opening of current accounts — 65% of cases traced to a single private bank — made it easier for the perpetration of crime.
The police has advised the public to flag any message promising easy cash to the cyber crime unit or at least avoid sharing bank details or putting money into sham offers from strangers.
