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11-01-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI: Do you want money in exchange for impregnating a woman? Who can decline this unique offer!
In early December, Mangesh Kumar (name changed) was scrolling through Facebook when he came across a video from “All India Pregnant Job Service” and decided to watch it.
The job sounded too good to be true: money and lots of it in exchange for impregnating a woman.
Of course, it was too good to be true. So far, the 33-year-old, who earns 15,000 Indian rupees ($180; £142) a month working for a wedding party decoration company, has already lost 16,000 rupees to the scammers and they’re asking for more.
However, Mangesh from the northern Indian state of Bihar is not the only one to fall for the scam, media reported.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Kalyan Anand, who heads the cyber cell in Bihar’s Nawada district, told media that hundreds of victims of an elaborate scam where gullible men were lured into parting with their cash with the promise of a big payday, a night in a hotel with a childless woman.
His team has so far arrested eight men, seized nine mobile phones and a printer, and is still searching for 18 others but the search for the victims turned out to be more complicated.
“The gang has been active for a year and we believe they have defrauded hundreds of people, but so far no one has complained, perhaps because of shame,” he explained.
A media outlet managed to speak to two victims one said he had lost 799 rupees, but did not want to talk about details. Mangesh was much more forthcoming and revealed how he fell victim to fraudsters over several phone calls.
“Ten minutes after I clicked the video, my phone rang. The man asked me to pay 799 rupees if I wanted to register for the job,” he told me.
The caller Mangesh calls him Sandeep, sir told him that he would be working for a company in Mumbai and that once he registered, he would be sent details of the woman he would have to impregnate.
They offered him half a million rupees almost three years’ salary just for having sex with the woman, and promised another reward of 800,000 rupees if he got pregnant.
“I’m poor, I really need money, so I believed them,” the father of two young boys told me.
Over the next few weeks, Mangesh was asked to pay over Rs.16,000 Rs.2,550 to obtain some court documents, Rs.4,500 as a security deposit and Rs.7,998 as Goods and Services Tax (GST) on the money he was supposed to receive.
He shared all the receipts and fake court documents with me, the official looking document has his name and his photo along with a photo of a man in a police uniform. In large letters at the top it says “Child Birth Agreement” and in small print below it is “Pregnancy Verification Form”.
The signature at the end of the document resembles the signature used by American talk show host Oprah Winfrey.
