Chandigarh: If you’re one of the many people turning to online platforms to earn money from home, you might want to think twice before signing up for any offers that seem too good to be true. Haryana Police have recently uncovered a fraudulent scheme where companies lured individuals with promises of easy money — only to exploit them in a global captcha-filling scam.
The participants were charged a hefty Rs 5,000 registration fee, only to find out that their work was being sold to foreign companies for profit.
The scam came to light when the Haryana Police, along with the home ministry’s cyber team, conducted a 10-hour-long raid in Rohtak district on Friday and arrested three people. It has been revealed that the company defrauded 35,000 people through its website, resulting in a total scam worth Rs 18 crore.
A Haryana Police spokesperson said two companies named PCL and Money Earn 24 were being run online by Rohtak residents Johnny and Rohit. While the office of one company was at Sheela Bypass in Rohtak, another one was located in Patna, Bihar.
The companies charged a registration fee of Rs 5,000 from people and asked them to upload their identity documents on the company’s website. After this, the person had to fill the captcha given on the company’s website. A person could only fill 90 captchas in a day from one ID. In this way, he could earn Rs 2,700 per month sitting at home. A person could also create multiple IDs. The companies also offered Rs 500 cashback through the referral system on the website. As many as 1,40,000 people registered themselves on these websites.
During the initial investigation, it was revealed that 35,000 people had invested through the company’s website. The money from the payment gateway of this company was sent to Udaipur. The company was also promoting these websites on social media platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram. The channel run by the company has 12,000 subscribers. A thorough investigation is being conducted in this matter to find out how many more people are involved in the scam, police officials said.
Police join fraudulent
website to expose scam
To get to the roots of the scam, a plan was prepared under the guidance of additional director general of police, Cyber, Mamta Singh. A member of the Haryana Police team registered himself on the company’s website. The I4C team of the home ministry was also helping out with the investigation.
During the raid on Nov 23 at the company’s office at Sheela Bypass, Rohtak, the team, led by DSP Cyber Nodal Police Panchkula, arrested the owner of both the companies, along with their aide from whom a revolver was also recovered. Apart from this, other items, including company documents, bank check books, laptops, QR codes, servers and computers, were recovered from the spot. All three accused were produced in the court on Saturday. The court has the accused to police remand.
SP, Cyber Amit Dahiya said the accused would also be taken to Patna and Udaipur on police remand.