Work from home fraud: Hyderabad firm acquires Rs 5.5 lakh security deposit, dupes more than 600 people

HYDERABAD: Work from home jobs have become quite common since the pandemic. However, several complaints have been lodged against a city-based firm, which had recruited people for digitization works. The company had offered an amount of Rs 5 per page for the digitization of 5,30,000 pages of documents. The company had recruited nearly 600 people for the job, which they could do from their homes.

The recruits were made to pay a security deposit of Rs 5.5 lakhs with the firm. The company had promised to refund the amount in six months and informed that the work would continue till 2027. The employees were supposed to convert the hard copy of the documents, including English novels, into PDFs.

The recruits were paid the promised amount in the initial months. The company gained the employees’ trust by giving them offer-letters, on-time payments and salary slips. However, as the company failed to pay in later months, the recruits approached the police. Through the police investigation, it was found that the company’s owner Amit Sharma, had duped about 620 people. His employees at the Hyderabad office were also not paid their salaries for months. According to police estimates, Amit Sharma had collected over Rs 30 crore as security deposit. He had obtained Rs 5.5 lakh from most of the recruits.