Indian Men Conned by "Impregnating Women" Scam

Mangesh Kumar was online when he came across a video from the "All India Pregnant Job Service" and decided to check it out. The job sounded too good to be true: money - and lots of it - in return for getting a woman pregnant.   It was, of course, too good to be true. 

So far, the 33-year-old, who earns 15,000 rupees ($180) per month working for a wedding party decoration company, has already lost 16,000 rupees to fraudsters - and they are asking for more.  But Mangesh, from the northern Indian state of Bihar, is not the only person to fall for the scam.

Deputy superintendent of police Kalyan Anand, who heads the cyber cell in Bihar's Nawada district, said there were hundreds of victims of an elaborate con where gullible men were lured to part with their cash on the promise of a huge pay day, and a night in a hotel with a childless woman.   So far, his team have arrested eight men, seized nine mobile phones and a printer, and are still searching for 18 others.

But finding the victims has proved more tricky.

"The gang has been active for a year and we believe they have conned hundreds of people, but no-one has so far come forward to complain, possibly because of shame," he explained.

Mangesh revealed how he fell prey to the scammers.  The caller told him that he would be working for a company in Mumbai and that once he had signed up, he would be sent details of the woman he would have to impregnate. The scammers offered him half a million rupees (almost three years wages) just to have sex with the woman and promised further reward of 800,000 rupees if she conceived. "I'm a poor man, I desperately need money so I believed them," the father of two young boys said.

Over the next couple of weeks, Mangesh was asked to fork out more than 16,000 rupees - 2,550 rupees to obtain some court documents, 4,500 as safety deposit and 7,998 rupees as Goods and Services Tax (GST) on the money he was going to get. The scammers kept him interested by sending him photos of "seven-eight women", asking him to choose the one he would like to impregnate. "They said they would book a hotel room in the town where I lived and I would meet the woman there," he said.

When Mangesh kept asking for the promised money, they sent him a receipt saying they had credited his bank account with 512,400 rupees but the money was on hold and would be paid after he'd paid 12,600 as income tax.  By then, Mangesh says, he had lost an entire month's salary and told them that he couldn't pay any more and asked for a refund.  "But [the scammers] refused and when I got angry, he told me that since my bank account showed a credit of 500,000 rupees, income-tax authorities would raid my home and arrest me.  "I'm a poor laborer, I'd lost a month's pay and I didn't want to get tangled in any criminal case"

According to DSP Anand, the men behind the scam are educated-- and they know how to work mobile phones, laptops and printers. The victims, on the other hand, are from all over India and most have little education.  The problem is, cyber law expert Pavan Duggal explains, that people in India, "are by and large very trusting and rarely do an independent verification of information on the internet", bolstered by an overconfidence in their safety.  "The scammers lured them with promise of free money and free sex which is a deadly combination. In situations like these, prudence often takes a backseat."

But with the advent of Covid-19 (when cellular and net banking became the norm)  Duggal says "the golden age of cyber crime began" and warns that "it will go on for decades".  The scammers, meanwhile, still haven't given up on Mangesh.

Mangesh  finally got in contact with the woman he had been promised a meeting with, and began speaking with her daily.  She's now claiming  the scammers have been scamming her too, and that most of the 500,000 rupees Mangesh had been promised is gone-- but that he can still get 90,000 rupees if he pays 3,000 rupees as GST.  Mangesh is angry that the original scammers will no longer takes his call. "Those who cheated me must get the maximum punishment. I do backbreaking work the whole day for 500 rupees. I know I made a huge mistake. But what they did with me is so wrong."