A youth from Madhya Pradesh’s Chhatarpur district has allegedly lost more than ₹12 lakh after a work-from-home offer involving Google ratings turned into a series of paid online tasks, with police arresting two people in the case.
The victim, Sarfaraz Ahmed of Laukushnagar, was allegedly contacted through Telegram and told he could earn money by completing simple online assignments.
What began with ratings and small tasks later turned into demands for deposits, with the victim allegedly being promised larger returns every time he paid more.
Police have arrested Ayan Khan of Guna and Sonali Jain of Isagarh after examining bank transactions and technical evidence linked to the complaint.
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A simple Google rating allegedly opened the door
According to police information in the case, Sarfaraz was first offered easy online work.
He was allegedly told that he could earn money by posting ratings on Google and completing other digital tasks.
The offer appeared straightforward.
Instead of asking for a large investment immediately, the operators allegedly introduced him to a sequence of tasks and gradually began asking him to deposit money.
Each new payment was supposedly linked to a task carrying a higher return.
Sarfaraz allegedly continued transferring money because he believed the amount he deposited would be returned along with profits after the tasks were completed.
By the time the promised withdrawals failed to materialise, he had allegedly paid more than ₹12 lakh.
This gradual escalation is one of the defining features of what police commonly describe as an online task scam.
How the task scam creates trust before demanding lakhs
These scams rarely begin by asking someone to transfer ₹10 lakh.
They usually start with something much smaller.
Indore Police has officially warned that fraudsters advertise part-time or work-from-home jobs on social media and then move victims into Telegram groups. People may initially be asked to rate hotels, films or YouTube channels and can even receive small payments for completing the first tasks.
Those early payments serve a purpose.
They make the victim believe the platform is genuine.
The next stage introduces “prepaid” or investment-linked tasks where the victim has to put in their own money to earn a bigger reward.
The amount then keeps increasing.
Indore Police said victims in three cases lost ₹14 lakh, ₹10 lakh and ₹8 lakh respectively after being drawn into similar Telegram task schemes.
A Pune tax consultant lost ₹2.72 crore this year after receiving a Telegram work-from-home offer involving Google reviews. He was first paid ₹500 for five reviews before being moved into prepaid tasks and eventually making 33 large transactions.
The cases are unrelated, but the method is strikingly similar.
What exactly is an online task scam?
A task scam disguises an investment fraud as paid digital work.
The victim may be asked to like a video, rate a business, review a hotel or complete another activity that takes only a few minutes.
The “job” is largely bait.
After building confidence, scammers tell the victim that certain premium tasks require an upfront deposit.
A dashboard or Telegram message may then show that the victim has earned a large profit.
But that displayed balance may not represent real money at all.
When the victim tries to withdraw it, another payment is demanded for a tax, processing fee, account upgrade or unfinished task.
The victim often keeps paying because previous deposits appear to be trapped inside the system.
₹62,000 and banking material recovered after arrests
Police say technical analysis and examination of the payment trail eventually led investigators to Ayan Khan and Sonali Jain.
The two were subsequently arrested.
Investigators reportedly recovered ₹62,000 in cash, two mobile phones, bank passbooks and ATM cards.
Those items could become important evidence.
The phones may contain Telegram conversations, task instructions, payment details or contact with other participants in the alleged network.
The banking material could help establish whether the arrested accused directly received the victim’s money or were operating accounts on behalf of others.
That question matters because task scams frequently rely on layers of bank accounts.
Mule accounts can hide the people running the scam
The bank account receiving the victim’s payment is not necessarily controlled by the mastermind.
Cybercrime networks often obtain accounts from other individuals and use them temporarily to collect or move fraudulent funds.
In a recent Gurugram task-scam investigation, police arrested three people accused of supplying bank accounts to cyber fraudsters. Investigators said ₹50,000 of the victim’s money entered one accused’s account, which had allegedly been handed over and subsequently sold onward for use in cybercrime.
Such accounts are commonly called mule accounts.
Money may enter one account and then be rapidly transferred through several others, withdrawn as cash or moved through other financial channels.
This is why passbooks and ATM cards recovered during cyber-fraud raids can matter far beyond one individual transaction.
Police in Chhatarpur are now examining whether the seized banking material connects the arrested pair to other victims or additional members of the alleged network.
Police now looking for the rest of the money trail
Investigators are trying to establish where Sarfaraz’s payments ultimately went and which accounts received the funds.
They are also examining whether other people were approached through the same Telegram-based method.
The arrested accused may represent only one layer of the operation.
The people who contacted the victim, controlled Telegram groups, supplied bank accounts and ultimately received the proceeds could potentially be different individuals.
That structure makes task scams difficult to investigate.
A victim may communicate with one Telegram profile, transfer money to another person’s bank account and see apparent profits on a completely separate platform.
None of those identities necessarily belongs to the person controlling the fraud.
The safest warning sign therefore appears much earlier.
A legitimate employer pays a worker for completing work.
It does not repeatedly demand that the worker transfer increasingly large amounts of personal money in order to unlock wages or commissions.
What this means for you: If an online job asks you to deposit money before completing tasks or withdrawing earnings, stop immediately. Do not keep paying simply because an app or Telegram message shows that you have made a profit.
The420 Insight: Task scams succeed by reversing the normal relationship between employer and employee. Once a person seeking income starts paying the supposed employer, the “job” has usually become the trap.
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