‘Click Farm’ Fraud Case: Uttar Pradesh Man Duped of Rs 22 Lakh on Pretext of Heavy Profits
In yet another case of 'click farm' fraud, a man has been duped of Rs 22 lakh. According to the FIR lodged with the Cyber Police station in Gomti Nagar, the victim got a message offering him money in lieu of simple task work, on his WhatsApp. Soon after, he was added to a Telegram group.
Lucknow, May 16: In yet another case of 'click farm' fraud, a man has been duped of Rs 22 lakh. According to the FIR lodged with the Cyber Police station in Gomti Nagar, the victim got a message offering him money in lieu of simple task work, on his WhatsApp. Soon after, he was added to a Telegram group.
The work involved clicking 'likes' on sites and links. He had a talk with one of the staff of the company offering the job and was given Rs 3,000 as profit for the work. Online Fraud in Pune: Cyber Fraudsters Dupe Software Engineer of Rs 24 Lakh on Pretext of Earning Extra Income by Performing Online Tasks; Investigation Underway.
"In order to win the confidence of the victim, the thugs even gave him a return as a salary of Rs 48,450 and then they asked him to invest money from an amount of Rs 4.84 lakh. He was also asked to deposit over Rs 2 lakh as tax and he paid the money in the hope of getting a heavy refund. But the miscreant kept offering bait to him and he finally fell for it by paying over Rs 3 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 6 lakh for doing different tasks as precondition of getting the invested sum back," said the police. ED Seizes Over Rs 91 Lakh Cash After Raids in Cooperative Society Lands Fraud PMLA Case.
However, the miscreants stopped taking phone calls from him after fleecing over Rs 22 lakh from the victim in the case. Left with no option, the victim lodged a case with the Cyber police stating that the miscreants defrauded him by impersonating themselves as staff of a registered company.
"I had checked the details of the company before accepting the online job offer," he said. SHO, Muslim Khan, said that an FIR under the charges of IPC 419 (Punishment for cheating by personation), IPC 420 (cheating) and other section had been lodged and investigations were underway.
A cyber expert said that 'click farm', is a scam in which a large group of low paid workers are hired to click on paid advertising links for the click. The workers click the links, surf the target website for a period and in turn get paid. However, in the garb of providing jobs, cyber scammers are cheating and duping innocents on the pretext of providing them money.
"So far, nobody has been arrested in connection with such a fraud, hence it is not easy to claim whose handiwork it could be, but the gang seemed to have spread across India," he said.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 16, 2023 01:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).