KOCHI: Cyber fraudsters have come up with new tricks to swindle money by recruiting people for bogus online jobs. Ernakulam rural cyber police have registered three such cases this week alone. In one incident, a woman from Nedumbassery lost Rs 19.7 lakh.
Ernakulam Rural Cyber Police Station House Officer M B Latheef said numerous complaints have been received recently from job aspirants. “There are many websites and social media platforms that offer work-from-home jobs with daily payment.
Once the link is clicked, fraudsters start chatting with the persons through WhatsApp. The messages they send look convincing as if they are being recruited for an online shopping website. The recruited persons are given tasks for which they have to pay money. The fraudsters claim they do online shopping business, they buy goods with the amount received as part of the task. They pay commission received from the sale of goods,” he said.
In the initial days, the recruited persons are given good returns for completing the task. However, they cannot retrieve the money. “The fraudsters say that to retrieve the earned money, they have to complete more tasks. Thus they take more money. But people never receive the paid money or promised commission in return,” he said.
The fraudsters had ‘recruited’ the Nedumbassery native in September. She transferred Rs 19.7 lakh to the bank accounts of fraudsters between September 20 and October 21. Similarly, a Keerampara native, 26, lost Rs 2.92 lakh which she paid on November 10 and 11. A 29-year-old Vengoor native also lost Rs 1.52 lakh. “The money in these cases went to different bank accounts.
So we can’t confirm whether the same gang has targeted all these persons. There might be more people who lost their money in a similar way. Many did not file any complaint because they might have lost a small amount,” a police officer said.
The police said people should not click unwanted links that ‘offer’ attractive deals. “There is no dearth of cyber awareness programmes. We are organising classes Still, people are becoming easy victims. People should report cyber crime by calling 1930,” Latheef said.