Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67860456

As cyber scams go, this one is rather unique.

In early December Mangesh Kumar (name changed) was scrolling on Facebook 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; £142) 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, told the BBC 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.

The BBC has managed to speak to two of the victims - one said he had lost 799 rupees, but didn't want to discuss details. Mangesh was much more forthcoming and, over the course of several phone calls, revealed how he fell prey to the scammers.

"Ten minutes after I'd clicked on 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 had signed up, he would be sent details of the woman he would have to impregnate.

They 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 told me.

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.

He's shared all the receipts and the fake court papers with me - the official-looking document has his name and carries his photograph along with that of a man in police uniform. In big capital letters on top, it says "Baby Birth Agreement" and the fine print below reads "pregnancy verification form".

The signature at the end of the document resembles one used by US talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

Dumb scam.
If you have to pay to part with something, it's 95% fake. You only pay to acquire something.

Indian no wise atall,despite having satellite in space,