Techies, educated citizens' online duping baffles Pune cops

PUNE: The cyber police have received 12 complaint applications and registered two FIRs in the past 90 days related to "earn-from-online-task" frauds involving amounts from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 1 crore.
At the police station level, several scams involving less than Rs 10 lakh are being investigated.
"We are trying to locate the suspects by working on the bank account details they used or the locations of the cryptocurrency exchanges. So far, we have found that the suspects used the bank accounts of poor people," senior inspector Meenal Patil of the Pune cyber police said, adding: "Our probe is on the right track."
But, the police have not yet had a breakthrough, and have no other details to share despite the increasing frequency of such frauds.
In most cases, the victims falling for such frauds have been software engineers or highly-educated professionals, which has flummoxed investigators. "The lure of making some extra money by performing online tasks in their free time is driving such victims into the trap set up by online crooks," Patil said.
One of the victims of fraud, a software engineer with an infotech company in Kharadi, who did not wish to be named, told TOI, "I stay alone and have some spare time. I decided to earn some extra money by working part time. My only condition was that it should be flexible and should have a facility of work-from-home."
She added: "After running an online search, I received a message on my messaging app account offering me simple tasks which I completed in just 30-40 minutes. The sender of the message transferred nearly Rs 1,200 to my account on three occasions and I was very happy."
"But later, the sender shared a cryptocurrency investment scheme and promised me 30% returns. After going through the scheme, I decided to invest money," she said. The techie transferred Rs 6 lakh to the account number she was given under the scheme, but the crooks stopped responding to her messages, after which she realized that she was duped. "I submitted my complaint to the cyber police and hope they will locate the scamsters," she added.
Lawyer Ameya Dange, who specializes in cyber laws, said, "The online scamsters are using services of a messaging application in which they can reach out to people just by conducting an online search. They then advertise their work-from-home schemes with good 'salaries' and 'perks'. If someone shows interest in their tasks, they forward links of the tasks to their victims, which are trivial in nature".
"They also pay some nominal money to their victims to win their confidence and trust. But later, they ask their victims to invest in their schemes and cheat them. They are using varied platforms... they either ask their victims to send money via banking facilities or by using cryptocurrency exchanges. They generally use bank accounts of other persons that are under their control," he said.
Patil said, "For the last two weeks, we are receiving at least one complaint application every day relating to online task fraud. We have accepted only the high-value complaint applications in which the victims have lost Rs 10 lakh or more. Complaint applications of less than Rs 10 lakh value are being referred to the police stations concerned."