Prakasam Superintendent of Police (SP) Malika Garg has cautioned public to be wary about frauds in the name of ‘online task’ or ‘prepaid investment task’.
Targeting the unemployed youth, businessmen, and software employees — scammers advertise part-time/work from home jobs via various social media platforms with daily earnings in the range of ₹1000-2000, she said after a review of such frauds here on Saturday.
Explaining the modus operandi, she said when approached, the online conmen give simple tasks like writing google map reviews, rating a travel agency/restaurant, liking and sharing YouTube videos while paying them little amounts of between ₹100-500 initially to win their confidence.
Soon after they add the victims to social media groups and send links to join attractive pre-paid task schemes on the pretext of higher returns of 30%-40%. After registering by paying some fees online, the tricksters make some bonus payments on completion of tasks and lure the to invest higher amounts. They will not allow investor to withdraw the money shown in the online account due to alleged delays in task completion, errors etc,. They threaten that the amount paid so far will not be returned if they leave in the middle and have to do more valued prepaid tasks and demand lakhs of rupees to pay GST and other taxes in order to withdraw the entire amount.
‘’It is better not to respond to WhatsApp and e-mail messages from unknown numbers in the name of work from home, part-time job for doing online tasks’‘, she suggested.
Ms. Garg urged people to report any suspicious messages or job offers on online platforms to the authorities and block the numbers from which such messages were received immediately. Any investment scheme that promises huge profits should definitely be understood as a scam, she added.
