Lucknow, March 17 : A man in Lucknow has been allegedly duped of Rs 77,000 by a fraudster running a fake 'click farm'.

A click farm is a form of click fraud where people are hired to click on paid advertising links for the click fraudster. The victim, Vijay Pandey (name changed), was recruited by the fraudster to 'like' videos on some YouTube channels, which he claimed were his clients who wanted to become influencers.
In return, the accused promised USD 3000 for a month's job. However, later, the accused asked Pandey to invest some money and become a permanent member of his click farm. Pandey paid Rs 77,000 in several instalments but got nothing in return.
Pandey, a resident of Indiranagar, said he first got an email for investment of Rs 1,000 on March 5 and thereafter would earn a profit of USD 3000. A week later, Pandey got a message of having earned a profit of Rs 3,000 and he fell for the bait.
He invested Rs 30,000, Rs 45,000 and Rs 2,000 respectively in the coming days but did not get any profit. He was asked to deposit Rs 6000 more to earn profit.
"I guessed something fishy and refused to pay further," he said and added that then he approached police.
SHO, Ghazipur (Indiranagar) Sunil Kumar Singh, said an FIR under charges of breach of trust and cheating was registered and the probe was underway.
Police said the complainant was given the task of liking certain links on social media sites like Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram daily.
"These cyber scammers usually operate from outside India and get all the transactions in cryptocurrency," said a senior officer adding that the money sent by the victim seems to have been held in a crypto wallet.
Last month, fraudsters had duped a woman of Rs 27.50 lakh in the name of a similar fraud.
"The task was to like and subscribe to social media accounts," the officer said adding that this case was also under probe.