FPJ Cyber Secure: In search of job, woman duped of ₹7.5 lakh

Mumbai: A 49-year-old woman lost more than ₹7 lakh after falling prey to work from home job fraud. In her complaint lodged with the Chunabhatti police, the Chembur resident said that she was hunting for jobs and had also uploaded her resume on various recruitment sites.

On May 18, the aggrieved received a message from an unknown number. Claiming to be a human resources (HR) executive of a reputed cosmetic brand company, the fraudster, also a woman, asked the complainant if she was interested in a work from home opportunity.

Victim asked to join Telegram accounts

Subsequently, the con asked her to like Instagram pages of the company and promised her ₹1,000 in lieu of the gig. The woman was asked to provide her bank account details and the money got credited in her account after completion of the task. She was then asked to join some Telegram accounts and told that if she kept performing the tasks uploaded on the Telegram accounts, she would be eligible to earn ₹5,000-₹30,000 a day.

Woman confronts fraudsters

Initially, the woman received the promised money in her account after completing the assignments but later she stopped getting returns even after paying for the tasks. Whenever she confronted the fraudsters, they would ask her to keep completing the prepaid tasks else she would not get her returns. In a span of four days, the complainant ended up 'investing' ₹7.59 lakh only to later realise that she is being duped, the police said.

On Monday, a case was filed under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code as well as provisions 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.