The chief executive officer (CEO) of India's largest online stock brokerage Zerodha, Nithin Kamath, in a series of tweets, explained how one of his friends lost ₹5 lakh to online scamsters tricking people by offering fake part-time job opportunities.
Scamsters encouraged the victim to invest money in fake crypto products, which appeared real in all aspects. The Zerodha CEO said the account of the fraudsters seemed like a "real crypto account, with account balance, ledger, P&L, etc". However, everything was fake and manipulated, including the Telegram group. Moreover, the crypto price movements were also manipulated to generate profits and sow greed at the start.
The billionaire CEO, via a Twitter thread, narrated a personal incident in which his friend (name not mentioned) was initially offered a part-time job via WhatsApp.
The first few tasks were about leaving fake reviews for resorts & restaurants in random places like Peru, said Kamath, following which the person received ₹30,000 as payment for completing the given task.
Later, the fraudsters added the person to a group created on messaging platform Telegram to do some of the tasks. "The next task for the group was to trade on a mock crypto platform, following a bunch of rules. Profits generated were allowed to be withdrawn, even without transferring any real money," he said.
To show profits, they manipulated the prices of "ransom crypto tokens" and showed them to the victim. "By the way, this wasn't Bitcoin or Ethereum, but random crypto tokens whose prices fraudsters could easily manipulate.
The group was now asked to transfer real money to generate higher returns. Others in the group claiming to transfer nudged my friend to do so as well."
After much coercing, and everything appearing "legitimate" from outside, the person transferred more money. "I guess the risk didn't seem much since the money transferred was the ₹30K earned through the platform.
But greed took over, and more money was transferred, probably due to peer pressure from others in the group who claimed to have made large transfers and profits," said Kamath.
Later, the person tried to withdraw but couldn't and was told that a certain number of trades were required. "The fear of being unable to withdraw the money took over, and more money was added to trade. This amounted to ₹5 lakh, a large amount for any person," Kamath revealed.
To scam the person more, the fake platform offered a "loan" when the person said there was no more money to add. "The person finally decided to confide with the spouse about the situation, who almost immediately realized it was a fraud. They reached out to the police for help."
He said after the victim lodged a police complaint, the police shared many cases — "even well-educated folks borrowing tens of lakhs and losing it in such sophisticated scams".
"Everyone is a target, and we need to create awareness. The important thing to remember is that there is no easy way to make a lot of money quickly," Kamath asserted.
Online frauds on the rise
There has been a significant rise in the number of UPI or credit or debit card or internet banking-related frauds in India in recent years. According to the government data, a total of 65,893 frauds, with the total value of ₹258.61 crore, were detected in India in the financial year 2021-22. The value of frauds increased from ₹244.01 crore in FY19 and ₹228.65 crore in FY20. The three states in which banks reported the highest such frauds to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in FY22 were Maharashtra (₹86.32 crore), Delhi (₹27.85), and Karnataka (₹21.4 crore).
"In order to prevent card or online frauds, the RBI has issued various instructions pertaining to security arrangements at ATMs of banks, skimming of ATM/debit cards/credit cards, and caution advice issued on SIM swap frauds, loan frauds through the mobile application and hacking of customers’ information from the bank’s server," said minister of state in the ministry of finance in Parliament last month.
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