Man loses Rs 1.82L paying Rs 100 on fake jobs website

An unemployed man was cheated of Rs 1.82 lakh when he tried paying Rs 100 as registration fee on a fake jobs portal.

On December 12, around 5 pm, Santhosh H Acharya, 31, received a phone call from a woman who introduced herself as Priyanka Malhotra, an executive from a jobs website. She offered him a job matching his qualification and asked if he would like to register on their website.

Acharya, who lives in Kadugodi, decided to register as he had been employed for the past few months. The caller then asked him to pay Rs 100 as a registration fee. When Acharya tried payment, the transaction failed. The caller then asked him to refresh the page. Within no time, Rs 32,000, Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh were debited from his bank account in three tranches.

It took Acharya a while to figure out that the online payment system had been manipulated to facilitate the cheating. He then filed a complaint with Kadugodi police. Investigators have opened a case of cheating under IPC section 420 and named Priya Malhotra as a suspect. Further investigations are underway.