Pramesh S Jain & Yogesh K Porwar
T
he Central Crime Branch officials busted “work from home” scam and arrested 11 people operating from three metro cities including Bengaluru,Hyderabad and Mumbai to cheat people online through whatsapp and telegram app.
Senior officer told reporters Based on complaint of a person from BEL layout in Vidyaranyapura who lost Rs.18.7 lakh online,a team of CCB officials led by Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abdul Aahad,took up the case and track down the accused through the bank transactions.
During investigation it was revealed that the accused message random numbers of whatsapp and telegram posing as human resource (HR) from well-known companies offering work from home jobs for extra income .
The accused offer simple tasks to like and follow social media accounts and YouTube videos,whoever respond and initially offer them quick returns .
This is for the bait and target the victims who show interest of earning more and lure them to invest to earn double returns,B.Dayananda,city police commissioner , while briefing the press,said .
The accused managed to convince the victims for few days that the investment will be more and better based on their investment and managed to get lakhs of rupees in the form of investment and escape .
Initial probe revealed that as per National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. (NCRP) portal the accused were involved in 2143 cases across 28 states including 265 cases in Karnataka cheated a total of Rs.158 crore .
In Bengaluru city alone the accused had 135 cases registered across 14 stations in the city .
The CCB officials have seized 30 bank accounts belonging to the accused and seized Rs.62.8 lakh,along with 11 mobile phones,two laptops,15 SIM cards and other bank accounts from them.
The accused were operating for the past one year and the racket is very well layered organized crime syndicate.
All the accused had been assigned different roles and some of the accused suspected to be operating from even abroad,Mr.Dayananda,said .
While the cheating amount runs to several hundred crores,the recovery amount will be less comparatively. This is because the accused withdraw the cash as soon as it landed in different bank accounts and spent.
We are contemplating to identify the properties of the accused for seizure and recovery”, he added .
