Two B'luru techies lose Rs 94L to online 'task scam'

Bengaluru: Two Bengaluru techies fell prey to a task completion scam and lost a combined Rs 94.95 lakh, with the hi-tech crypto fraud providing a glimpse into the mind-boggling tricks in the arsenal of online scamsters.

The fraud happened over several days and in the months of September and November.

Ram Teja (name changed on request), 33, a software engineer from Mahadevapura, lost Rs 49 lakh between September 9 and 20 and Saurabh Kumar Sharma, 40, a techie from Whitefield, lost Rs 45.95 lakh between November 12 and 16.

On September 9, Teja received a WhatsApp text message from an unknown number about an “opportunity to earn by reviewing restaurants” and received Rs 250 for completing it. This overture from the fraudsters set him up for the next trap: Teja joined a Telegram group ‘Kareena Rajawade’ and was told about prepaid tasks on swiccatch.com.

“There were Task 1, Task 2 and Task 3 where you invest some money and get returns ranging from 25% to 30%,” Teja told DH. “There would be seven to eight prepaid tasks daily. Once you select a particular task, they will send a merchant account number and once the payment was made, the receipt was shared with their analyst, they suggested whether to buy or sell.”

Teja said that swiccatch showed cryptocurrencies, where the scammers claimed the money would be invested based on the chosen task. “The analysts asked me to click on buy on a task on the website to complete it. If I invested Rs 1,000, I was told I would get Rs 300 profit. In the first two tasks, I received some profits, but in the last task, I clicked sell by mistake. My account score turned negative. To convert it into positive, I was asked to invest more,” he said.

Teja ended up investing Rs 49 lakh and transferred it to 12 different bank accounts in separate instalments. “When I sought a withdrawal, they asked me to wait for some time and then deleted my account and ceased communication.”

Sharma, on the other hand, was initially asked on November 12 to like a few products on Flipkart for which he received minuscule payments. He was contacted by Sakina0921 on Telegram next where he was asked to transfer a sum, which would be “invested in a crypto platform, h5.aifx.me”.

“Initially, I received returns for my investment of Rs 1,000 but then the investment was increased to Rs 10,000,” Sharma told DH. “Once the Rs 10,000 was invested in so-called the crypto platform, we were asked to do a team task where four investors, including me, would place a bet for 30% profit within 180 seconds and they would give the instructions. I realised later that it was just a simulation.”

During the second task, Sharma said that one of the participants made a mistake for which everyone was penalised. “I was told to invest further as the ‘merchant’ suffered a loss or I wouldn't be able to withdraw. They said a Rs 1 lakh investment was required. I didn’t agree and I was told that everyone in the group would lose the money. So I transferred the money. This kept on happening, till I was asked for an investment of Rs 7 lakh,” he said.

Sharma, in multiple investments, ended up transferring Rs 45.95 lakh to 13 different bank accounts.

Whitefield Cyber Economic and Narcotics Crime police registered two separate cases on November 16 and November 17 under Section 66D of the IT Act and IPC Sections 419 (cheating by personation) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property).