The 26-year-old cyber criminal revealed that he had duped many people in the past by promising to get them jobs in private airlines. Here’s how the scam unfolded.
instagram job scam
In December, a job posting on Instagram sparked the woman’s interest. When she followed the link, she was taken to another Instagram account @airlinejoballindia. She was instructed to fill out this form with her information, which included her contact details.
When he filled the form, he got a call from a person named Rahul. He was initially requested to pay Rs 750 for registration. However, as time passed, he was asked to send additional funds for gate pass fee, insurance, security deposit and other expenses. When the demand for money continued even after sending Rs 8.6 lakh, the woman got worried.
After this, the woman’s husband informed the Central Delhi Police about the incident. After an investigation, the officials revealed that most of the money was siphoned off in Hisar, Haryana. Rahul’s calls to the woman were also traced to the same address. After verifying all the data, the police team raided and arrested the fraudster.
The criminal confessed to the investigators that he misled several people by promising them jobs in private airlines. According to a TOI report, he started doing this when the culprit was jobless for over two years due to the pandemic.
How to stay away from scams on Instagram, other platforms
In recent times, online scams are on the rise. Recently, a Delhi man was duped of Rs 29 lakh through an Instagram iPhone scam. Meanwhile, a financial advisor in Hong Kong lost over Rs 14 crore through Tinder. In fact, the popular web series “Jamtara: Sabka Number Aayega” on Netflix shows how these types of scams are done.
To avoid such scams, you should keep these things in mind:
- Don’t take jobs that come to you from people you don’t know and ask for money.
- Do not share your passwords, PINs, or bank account numbers with anyone, as genuine businesses and financial institutions would never ask for these details over the telephone or email.
- Don’t click on pop-up messages or posts whose content sounds too good to be true.
- Be careful about clicking on shortened URLs that hide the full address of the page.
- find spelling or grammatical errors in the message; If it doesn’t look professional, that’s a dead sign it’s an Internet fraud.
- When shopping outside, use your network provider’s data rather than public Wi-Fi, as some hotspots may be unsecured.
