Tata Indicash - Rent ATM Fraud Scam
- Do give this a read, if you’re planning to rent or lease out your space to Indicash.
First things first, step back immediately if you’ve made a request through
- https://www.tataindicash.org/ OR
- https://www.indicash.org/, OR
- https://myindicash.org/
- All of them are operated by the indicash racket in Odisha and Bihar, This is a duplicate website of https://www.indicash.co.in/ (Operated by Tata).
EDIT: This guy keeps changing the website name and victims keep helping me by commenting on my blog with the updated website name.
You might have heard of having side income through ATM, so did my friend. Enquiring further, Indicash looked alluring to her. So, let’s first search “what Tata Indicash is” Let me Google it for you:
That’s how they present the deal:
- You rent space for a given amount of time (10, 15 or 21 years), and
- They deposit the corresponding lacs into your account,
- which you need to pay post-tenure is over,
- OR you can also get it deducted from the monthly rent: ₹21,200 you’re receiving, which act as an installment towards 15lacs you’ll have to pay in the future.
- All this on the cost of an initial investment of 16,500 as a security deposit which they say is refundable.
- Attaching the mail, I know that tone of the mail is the big doubting pointer, but everything was overlooked because of the website (https://www.indicash.org/ now known as https://myindicash.org/ also known as https://www.tataindicash.org/)
The process started off:
Day1
She applied through their portal, fill out all the details. Replies were coming very soon.
The guy (will be denoting as RK Jain, the name he told us) requested her to share details like Aadhar card, PAN card and other documents of whosoever the land belongs to, and a small clip of area available renting out for ATM.
As per the process, next was the site visit. To our surprise, we directly received the approval email without any site visit from their end (Doubt 1: We thought Indicash is leasing out to many places, hence not stepping down for physical verification & checking through maps is a feasible option for them)
With the verification, the next step was to take off this process by paying the initial amount security deposit, through PhonePe, GPay, or whatsoever, which she paid, as RK Jain was insisting to make payment as soon as possible in order to start the next steps. And she did.
Day2
We received this mail
Mr. RK Jain calls, confirms, and NOW demands 34,300 as Agreement charges, this was the hitting point for us, as this expense wasn’t mentioned before. As a stimulus to the sudden expense, my friend told him, this amount is not possible immediately, to which guy insists on borrowing from someone else and paying him as this will lead to faster processing of documents.
This email sparked the fire inside us, and we started digging his online presence. We started with checking the emails and texts he shared, here’s the glimpse:
TATA indicash, asking to transfer money in “Jeypore bazar” situated account? Really? Do companies do that? And what’s wrong with that name? INDICASH.PVT.LTD? I was hell shocked for overlooking these details.
We started with asking his documents, here are the documents he sent, uploading the main one
I’m exposing it so that even if he is misusing somebody’s lost documents, the other guy should know as well.
The indicash ID card was a big triggering point, the ID card image can never be a selfie in big companies like Tata. This made us dig further, this is when we noticed there are 2 sites with the same name
- https://www.indicash.co.in/ — By Tata
- https://www.tataindicash.org/ AKA https://www.indicash.org/ , AKA https://myindicash.org/ — By frauds (A.K.A RK Jain)
Paying attention to details, made us realize that 1/3rd homepage of the Tata website talks about this
This is very similar to caution fake website has flashed on their website, which looks something like this,
The only difference between these captions is of a line
Please be informed that TCPSL does not ask for any security deposit or processing fee from the prospective landlord.
which is missing in the fraud website and present in the main website, hence clue 1. Next was the PPT shared by the fraudster. There’s already a PPT present in Tata’s main website, which we happen to notice after this. We compared these PPTs and notices that the one shared by RK Jain, has only the last page missing, which talks about contacting them,
By now we were quite sure this is a fraud. Surprisingly the fraud website also had the option to check status, which looks something like this:
Here’s the invoice available as well, this scam is well planned and supported by a team.
Now, we were very sure this is a fraud, we now started backtracking and found a video on this YouTube channel — way to growth, which talks about “Ways to earn money in Lockdown”, I was laughing at this stupidity, Tata clearly says that they’re not operational in renting and leasing because of COVID-19, then comes this guy, who claims to earn money in lockdown, and shows the way of applying in this website. I’m hell sure this guy is a part of this scam. As soon as I commented to let the community know about this, he removed his video.
So now, to have a headcount of the team working behind this, we have
- A guy working out of the call center (RK Jain), Truecaller registered name (RK Jain indicash ATM)
- A guy handling the online presence of this. (Amit: WayToGrowth, Suraj: SRJ TECH)
- A guy handling complaints ( Virendra Bhor)
- A guy whose identity is used for emailing (Sibadatta Mishra)
We have a banker friend, and reaching out to him for cross-verifying if the account is legit or not was next. The friend clearly told, this is a fraud account, it has lacs of the amount coming in daily, and surprisingly it gets withdrawn as soon as it is credited.
The fraud was concluded with this, and we have lost our money. The only thing to feel happy about was that we were able to figure this out before paying 34k, we kind of saved.
We could have mourn about this loss and kept it personal, but then I see these videos are uploaded years ago, hence the racket is operational for years, earning lacs daily of our hard-earned money, Thus it was important to bring this to public notice through whatever way possible.
Lessons learned:
- HTTPS sites can be fake too.
- Indexed in google on top, hence don’t believe the top suggested sites by Google (Searching “Tata Indicash” lists this website on 2nd and 3rd number). EDIT 1: Now it is on top. EDIT2: Now it is known as https://myindicash.org/
- Big domain names like .org can host fake websites too.
- Big names like TATA knowingly can be ignorant about the scams going under their name — we reached out to original Tata customer care, they straightaway requested us to reach out to the police.
- Official emails are REQUIRED to be encrypted and have signature included (which was missing here).
- Customer care can fuck their customers too, hence don’t believe them blindly.
Stay safe guys, be extra aware in frauds like. Hope this article saves you from a loss you might bear and regret.
EDIT: This guy keeps changing the names and victims keep helping me by commenting on my blog with the updated website name
