Techie lured into earning extra income by liking videos, duped of ₹42 lakh

A software engineer working with an IT company here was allegedly duped of around ₹42 lakh by scammers who lured him into earning handsome money by liking some videos, police said on Saturday.

The man was added to a group on the Telegram Messenger app and asked to invest, but later he was not allowed to withdraw that sum.

According to a complaint filed by a resident of Sector 102 here, on March 24, he received a message on his WhatsApp, claiming that he can earn extra income by doing a part-time job of liking videos on video sharing platform YouTube.

"When I agreed to work with them, a woman named Divya added me to a group on Telegram app. She asked me to invest money with the claim of assured better returns. On the pretext of a task, they had asked me to invest and I transferred a total of ₹42,31,600 from mine and my wife's bank accounts," the complainant said.

"Besides Divya, other people named Kamal, Ankit, Bhoomi, Harsh confirmed the transaction and soon after told me that I have earned ₹69 lakh plus profit. But they did not allow me to withdraw the money. They then asked me to transfer ₹11,000 more, which seemed fishy to me and I moved to police," he added.

An FIR was registered against unknown fraudsters under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Information Technology (IT) Act at cybercrime, west police station on Friday.

A senior police officer said they have sought the bank details and a probe is underway.