Hyderabad: A 38-year-old US-returned private worker from Tellapur was duped of 1.3 crore by cyber criminals posing as e-commerce portal traffic promoters offering part-time work on Telegram.The victim was first approached through Telegram on June 30 by a user calling herself Avni Pandit. Claiming her company paid freelancers for adding items to shopping carts of an e-commerce portal, the fraudster lured the private employee into completing three small, paid trial tasks. Then, a second handler, Sakshi, made him join a group on a fraudulent cryptocurrency site, ‘okx01.click/trade,’ and began assigning prepaid investment tasks.On June 30, the fraudsters returned 32,900 to the victim after a few initial payments from his side, boosting his confidence. Subsequently, on their instructions, the victim transferred amounts ranging between 1,000 and 30 lakh per task. They charged additional money citing corrections, data repair fee, tax clearances, and VIP channel activations. The victim transferred a little over 1.3 crore to various bank accounts between June 30 and July 4.As they kept asking for additional amount for processing fee to let him withdraw, the victim realised the platform was fraudulent and approached police on July 19. On his complaint, a case was registered by the Cyberabad Cyber Crime police under Sections 318(4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 319(2) (cheating by personation), 336(3) (forgery for purpose of cheating), 338 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), and 340(2) (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) read with 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) along with Section 66-D of the Information Technology Act against the fake website, Telegram handles, the fraudsters operating them, and the bank account holders. Police were analysing the money transaction details to identify the accused.
