27-year-old vegetable vendor becomes cyber scammer, earns 21 crores in 6 months
He became a central figure in 37 fraud cases across 10 Indian states and assisted in 855 other scams.
Rishabh was a vegetable vendor who like many lost his business and suffered losses during the pandemic and to reduce his suffering and cut down his losses took to doing fraudulent work-from-home schemes but soon, things took a dark turn.
We all have heard of ‘rags to riches’ stories where a person from a very humble background has through his hard work and determination achieved something truly impressive. However, this is not how the story goes for Rishabh Sharma who did do something incredibly impressive but through the wrong means.
As per a Times of India report, Rishabh earned almost Rs 21 crores in just six months by defrauding people and became a central figure in 37 fraud cases across 10 Indian states and assisted in 855 other scams. Rishabh’s run, however, came to an end after he was arrested by the police on 28th October through the bank accounts he used for transferring money. Reports also suggest that Rishabh was also in contact with criminal groups from countries such as China and Singapore to send the money through secretive methods.
Soon after the pandemic hit and he shut his business, Rishabh contacted a friend of his who was well-versed with this kind of work and started working for him. His friend had given him a list of phone numbers whom Rishabh used to call on random and offer job opportunities which were too good to be true.
Rishabh’s job was to create a fake website that looked like the Marriott Bonvoy’s website after which he offered the people part-time jobs to write reviews for the hotel group. He pretended to be from Marriott Bonvoy and introduced his victims to his colleague, Sonia, who claimed to work for one of the hotels. He even made a Telegram group for all of his victims where he would ask them to write positive reviews and earn money. Initially, he would transfer Rs 10,000 to earn their trust and then convince them to invest more money by promising better returns. As soon as someone would pay the money, Rishabh would disappear with the money and they wouldn’t be able to reach him anymore.
The police ultimately charged Rishabh with cheating amongst other crimes and also found that he was in contact with international criminal groups who would hire people in India to open bank accounts for stolen money before sending it secretly to other countries.
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