A 27-year-old vegetable vendor was arrested after he earned Rs 21 crore by scamming others with fake work-from-home jobs, a Times of India report said.
As per police officials, Rishabh Sharma was directly involved in 37 cases of fraud that were registered in 10 Indian states and played a role in 855 other cases.
His latest victim was a Dehradun-based businessman who was cheated of Rs 20 lakh. The report said that police officials in Uttarakhand arrested the man on October 28.
“A few years ago, he would sell vegetables and fruits in Faridabad. Like most other businessmen, he incurred massive losses during the pandemic and had to wind up. For the next few months, he took up various WFH offers to sustain his family.
“He then met an old friend who was already involved in orchestrating online frauds. In just six months, since he started committing frauds, he netted Rs 21 crore,” senior Uttarakhand police officer Ankush Mishra said.
Sharma first created a fake website of “Marriot Bonvoy”-marriotwork.com, that was similar to the original website of the hotel chain, marriot.com.
The businessman got a Whatsapp message on August 4, regarding a work-from-home opportunity about a part-time job to write reviews for the “Marriot Bonvoy” group of hotels.
“Since the offer seemed genuine, I called on the number provided with the message. A man identified himself as Rishabh Sharma, a representative of Marriott Bonvoy. He introduced me to his colleague Sonia, who, he said, was an associate of one of the hotels of the group,” the man said in his complaint.
The man received an initial payment of Rs 10,000 and was later credited with the same amount for a second time in his ICICI bank account. But soon, the investment started to surge exponentially thereby raising concerns about the legality of the job.
“Every time I would ask for returns, they would persuade me to invest more, saying the profits could run into a crore. After a while, they stopped responding to my calls and messages and switched off the numbers. I had already invested Rs 20 lakh by then,” the businessman said.
Mishra said that Sharma was randomly speak to others and send them messages and lure them into the scam.
“We traced the bank account details and found he was based in Gurgaon. He would randomly call up people and send them messages. Those who responded to them were tricked into the investment scam,” he said.
“In Rishabh’s case, for instance, we found that the money had been sent to China in the form of crypto. He was an agent of one of the international gangs. Usually, these agents don’t have any information on the actual mastermind. We are trying to find out more in any case,” Mishra added.
