The Nilgiris Cyber Crime Police registered a case against scammers who defrauded a resident of Udhagamandalam of ₹14.18 lakh by promising to pay him for favourable reviews of services on social media.
According to the police, the victim, S. Kingston, 41, a resident of Theetukkal in Udhagamandalam received a message via a mobile messaging application offering him an online job. When he expressed his willingness to take up the offer, the scammers made him join a cloud-based messaging app, where their locations would become harder to track.
They made Mr. Kingston put up three reviews online and paid him ₹50 for each of his reviews, police said. Once they got the victim to trust them, they made him join a Crypto trading platform and convinced him to invest ₹14.8 lakhs, promising him significant returns on his investment.
However, once Mr. Kingston made the payments to the bank accounts of the scammers, they stopped responding to his messages, following which the victim realised that he had been scammed. Based on a report filed on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, the police registered a case under various sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000, and began investigations.
Police have warned users of mobile messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram against engaging with people claiming to offer jobs for posting reviews on social media accounts.
