Digital fraud gang members are swindling huge amounts of money from people in the name of freelancing, offering attractive remunerations in a short time while staying at home.
However, most victims do not seek legal remedies for fear of embarrassment and additional trouble. Taking the opportunity of no complaint to law enforcers, the fraud gangs are increasing exponentially.
According to an investigation, organized frauds make lucrative freelancing offers by advertising on social media, including Facebook and YouTube. Many young people are reported to have fell in their traps when they make contacts with the deceivers seeing their advertisements.
The deceivers then also make some monetary payments to earn or build trust in return for their work. At one point, after gaining trust, they extort huge sums of money from the youth and disappear.
A young man named Arafat Hossain filed a case at the Rampura police station after being a victim of this digital fraudulence. He complained that he saw an advertisement for earning Tk 5,000 per day through outsourcing simply being at home working on Facebook.
He contacted the number given in the advertisement on WhatsApp. He was initially given simple tasks like a Google Maps review and an online voting system upgradation. After doing those tasks, the fraud people paid him Tk 450 through BKash.
This increased Arafat Hossain’s confidence on the fraud people not knowing what rest ahead.
They then added Arafat to a Telegram group. He was informed that if he invests Tk 2000 taka, he will get Tk 2800 as a bonus. Then, Arafat sent Tk 2000 to the Bkash number given to him. In return, he was given Tk 2800 as a bonus. Arafat soon got interested in their offerings and continued to respond to their offers.
At one stage, the gang of deceiver took Tk 23,000 from him in two phases. If he waned the bonus of that money, he was asked to send Tk 36,000. After sending Tk 36,000, part of the profit from that money was eventually sent.
With such a cleaver strategy, the fraud gang took Tk 1.49 lakh from Arafat Hossain and stopped communicating with him. In this incident, Arafat filed a complaint at the Rampura police station.
Based on that complaint, the members of the Cyber Crime Wing of the Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU) arrested Mosharraf Hossain. But another fraud gang member, Hemal, remains out of reach. There was not just one incident. During the interrogation, the fraud Mosharraf said that he had committed numerous such frauds. He has grabbed several crores of taka by making such attractive offers to youths.
A senior police officer said that this is a part of the fraudulence business in the name of online freelancing. He urged the young society to work with awareness to stay away from the clutches of such fraudsters.
