Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath shared shocking details about a scam on Wednesday. Nikhil shared the experience of a person he knows, who got scammed recently and lost more than ₹5 lakh. The shocking details around the scam reveal how fraudsters are now enticing people by displaying short-term gains and then trapping them for extracting a larger amount.
“Someone I know got scammed & lost money. It started with a response to a part-time job offer on WhatsApp. The first few tasks were about leaving fake reviews for resorts & restaurants in random places like Peru. ~ ₹30k was transferred to the bank for the tasks completed,” Kamath said in a Twitter thread.
Zerodha CEO added that after giving him 30,000, the scammers added the victim to a Telegram group and the next task was to trade on a mock crypto platform. The scammers allowed the victims to withdraw profits from the trade without investing any real money.
“By the way, this wasn’t Bitcoin or Ethereum, but random crypto tokens whose prices fraudsters could easily manipulate. The group was now asked to transfer real money to generate higher returns. Others in the group claiming to transfer nudged my friend to do so as well,” Kamath said.
“I guess the risk didn’t seem much since the money transferred was the ₹30K earned through the platform. But greed took over, and more money was transferred, probably due to peer pressure from others in the group who claimed to have made large transfers and profits,” the next tweet said.
Nikhil Kamath further added that now the victim tried withdrawing the money, but was told that he needs certain minimum trades. Fearing to lose, a large sum, the victim kept trading and with time deposited ₹5 lakh with the platform.
“The platform offered a loan when the person said there was no more money to add. The person finally decided to confide with the spouse about the situation, who almost immediately realized it was a fraud. They reached out to the police for help,” he said.
“The account seemed like a real crypto account, with account balance, ledger, P&L, etc. But it was all fake; everything on it was manipulated, including the telegram group. The crypto price movements were also manipulated to generate profits and sow greed at the start,” Kamath added.
Kamath said that police shared many such cases where educated people lost money to these kinds of scams. He warned that everyone is a target the important thing to remember is that there is no easy way to make a lot of money quickly.
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