Zerodha co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath shared details of an online investment scam to create awareness and voiced an alarm that “everyone is a target.” He wrote on his Twitter handle how someone he knew got scammed recently and lost more than ₹5 lahks to fraudsters.
“It started with a response to a part-time job offer on WhatsApp,” Kamath wrote in a Twitter thread. According to the tweet, the first task assigned was to post fake reviews for resorts and restaurants in random places like Peru that credited ₹30,000 as a reward.
The scammers then added the victim to a Telegram group and assigned another task to trade on a mock crypto platform. The victims were allowed to withdraw the profits gained from trade without having to invest 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 noted.
The victim was informed about certain minimum trades when attempting to withdraw money. Having invested a large sum and with the fear of losing, the victim continued trading and his deposits on the platform rose to ₹5 lakh. “The platform offered a loan when the person said there was no more money to add,” Kamath’s tweet said. Realising it was a fraud, the victims reached out to police for help.
“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 said in his tweet.
Warning everyone about the scam, Kamath added, “The important thing to remember is that there is no easy way to make a lot of money quickly.”
Zerodha recently announced a joint venture with wealth management platform Smallcase to launch an asset management company focussing on building a low-cost passive mutual fund products.