Training at posh hotels in Mumbai, transactions worth Rs 5 crore: How latest ‘work from home’ scam operated

According to police, the complainants alleged they would receive messages on social media offering a lucrative ‘work from home’ gig. Once they agreed, the victims would be directed to join a Telegram group.

Police said the accused would then give the victims particular tasks — like 100 YouTube videos or rate 50 videos — to make money. “Initially, many victims received some money. However, they were later coerced to pay more to ‘unlock superior tasks’. Several victims lost Rs 70-80 lakh this way,” said an officer.

DCP (North) Sagar Singh Kalsi said: “There were rising cases of WFH job frauds in Delhi. Our cyber team conducted a detailed technical analysis of call detail records and the money trail. Continuous surveillance was mounted on suspects and we zeroed in on their locations.”

A team led by SHO Pawan Tomar (Cyber North district) conducted several raids and found an office, called ‘Hi Tech Electronics’, in Delhi and nabbed two of the accused, Parveen Kumar and Monty, from here. The third accused, Gaurav, was arrested from Haryana’s Sonepat.

The MO

Police said the arrested men belonged to the ‘accounts’ module. Explaining this side of the gang, Kalsi said: “The main accused are operating from Dubai and have associates in Delhi and Mumbai. These associates would approach youngsters desperately looking for jobs. Monty and Gaurav revealed that in January, they were offered jobs in Mumbai. On reaching there, they were trained to use their ID proofs to procure SIM cards and open fictitious current bank accounts in lieu of Rs 10,000 each. They stayed in good hotels and were trained for two weeks.”

Police said the ‘training’ in question involved each accused being asked to procure 9 SIMs using their ID proof. Each SIM card was used to further open a current bank account.

“The accused set up a fake office in Mumbai and Delhi and created current accounts since they dealt in transactions worth crores every day. For this, the bank needs to carry out verification. Bank officials were cheated as they were told the accused are part of an MSME. Such businesses get support from banks and the accused would open 8-10 bank accounts using a single ID proof,” said a senior police officer.

The men were then sent back home after ‘training’ and would get paid. “The men were using accounts of almost every bank possible to dupe victims. We could only freeze about Rs 2 lakh from one account. The rest of the money, which amounts to Rs 5-10 crore (per account), was transferred off shore to Dubai-based accounts,” added another officer.

Also Read

20-year-old woman jumps to death from Gurgaon mall

Aspiring model, wanted to make it big: Kin and friends recall DU student ...

Delhi News Live Updates: Kejriwal targets Centre over ordinance, says 'BJ...

Former UP Congress leader joins BJP

The arrested men also worked in coordination with those running the Telegram groups. “We are trying to trace members of that module as well. They would plant fake members who would post ‘fake winnings’ on the group to lure or encourage victims to invest more,” said an officer.