Mumbai Cyber Safe: Software engineer loses ₹3.3 lakh in ‘YouTube Likes’ fraud in Seawoods

Navi Mumbai: A 27-year-old woman, a software engineer from Seawoods lost ₹3.3 lakh to cyber fraudsters in ‘YouTube Likes’ fraud. The victim was promised ₹50 per like on YouTube videos that were sent to her.

Initially, the fraudsters paid a small amount as an income. But later, they asked to first make a payment to complete a task and get the income and investment both together. 

Fraudster approached victim through WhatsApp

According to the complainant, the cyber fraudster approached her through a WhatsApp message regarding additional income by just liking videos of Youtubers. 

Telegram group

The complainant liked three videos and ₹150 was deposited in her bank account in the first week of February. Later, she asked to pay ₹1000 for registration and she immediately got back ₹1300 to her bank account. She was then added to a Telegram group where there were four members.

The admin of the Telegram group gave ₹3000 per task to each member of the group. However, the admin said that the payment would be made at the end of the day. Subsequently, the amount kept increasing and it reached ₹1.5 lakh. 

Later she was asked to invest another ₹3 lakh. Realising that she was being cheated, she did not transfer any amount further. However, she had already transferred ₹3.3 lakh.

She lodged a complaint at the cyber portal and later she was called at NRI Coastal police station to register a complaint. The NRI Coastal police registered a complaint under section 66 C and 66 D of the IT Act and started an investigation.