TECH NEWS – Recently, a software engineer lost more than $51,000 due to a WhatsApp scam that promised to make him rich by liking YouTube videos…

WhatsApp scams are not new: countless people have fallen victim to them. It doesn’t take a genius to separate those who know what they’re doing from those who don’t. Well, one unlucky software engineer from Gurgaon, India, fell victim to one such scam. He lost a significant amount of money that could have easily made someone’s life better.

Together, the unnamed software engineer and his wife lost INR 42,31,600, the equivalent of just over $51,000.

A significant amount – more than enough to make a real difference in a man’s life. All this happened via WhatsApp and Instagram back in March.

The victim received a message on the app claiming he could earn more money if he took part in a part-time job where all he had to do was like videos on YouTube. Seems simple enough, right? However, here comes the red flag. The engineer was asked to invest money. Once he agreed, he was added to a Telegram group. Here, the engineer ended up transferring a total of INR 42,31,600 from both his and his wife’s accounts. After the scammers received the money, they claimed that the victim had made a profit of over INR 6.9 million. But instead of letting him withdraw this money, they demanded INR 11,000 as an extra.

The second demand caused alarm, and the victim decided to contact the police. She then registered an FIR against the alleged WhatsApp fraudsters.

Unfortunately, we don’t know if the victim managed to get the money back, but everyone should remember that these scams are much more common than we think.

These online scams typically start with a greeting, and then, after replying, we receive a text message with a rather attractive job offer. On paper, this sounds like it could bring in a lot of money, but the reality is often different. In most cases, people end up losing a lot of money. Simply put, it is absolutely impossible to get a job on WhatsApp that claims to make you rich. Therefore, you should always avoid such texts because you lose nothing by simply ignoring them.

Source: The Time of India