The Crime Branch-CID sleuths of the Mumbai police have blown the lid off an international job recruitment racket with the arrest of four persons, including a woman, from Bengaluru who had allegedly cheated scores of job seekers from several States in the country to the tune of several lakhs of rupees by promising jobs in Canada, US, UAE and other countries.
Acting on the complaint of a senior citizen who was duped while looking for a job after his retirement, the investigators carried out an elaborate investigations and tracked down four persons from Bengaluru who had allegedly cheated scores of job seekers from Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and other states by promising “technical” jobs abroad. They had collected lakhs of rupees on several pretexts.
The four arrested youngsters were identified as Ajay Bhavanishankar Gupta (23), Cedric Domnic Robert (23), Vignesh Suresh KC (22) and Mrs Sneha Narendra Panchariya (23). All of them are residents of Easter Enclave at Hormalu in Karnataka’s Bengaluru. While one of them was arrested in Mumbai, the remaining three were picked up from Bengaluru.
In August, 2018, a senior citizen who had earlier worked abroad was looking for job after his retirement came across an advertisement that read 'International Jobs and Free Recruitment' on a Facebook page which claimed that there were vacancies for technical posts with huge salaries in countries like Canada, United States, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other countries.
The senior citizen concerned applied for a job in Canada and sent bio-data and other documents to the advertiser through email and WhatsApp. He began following up with the advertiser for the job through email and WhatsApp.
The advertiser concerned meanwhile set up a WhatsApp group with a fake job recruiting official as an administrator for those looking for technical jobs using an international mobile SIM card. The administrator concerned asked the job seekers to send a total money to the tune of Rs 1,54,000 each to the advertiser online.
However, the job seekers did not jobs as promised nor was the advertiser ready to return the money taken to the job seekers. When asked for return of money, the alleged recruiters began to threaten the job seekers.
With no alternative, the senior citizen concerned registered a complaint with the Mumbai police. The case was then transferred to Unit-11 of the Crime Branch-CID visited Bengaluru early this week and arrested the remaining three youngsters. The investigators have seized a laptop, mobile phone and other documents that had used for allegedly cheating the job seekers.
“The investigations have revealed that these four arrested youngsters have cheated scores of persons in Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and other states to the tune of lakhs of rupees, by promising jobs abroad,” ," Crime Branch's Deputy Commissioner of Police Akbar Pathan said here on Wednesday.
The four arrested youngsters have been booked under sections 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery) 467 (forgery of valuable security, will), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using a forged document), 34 (common intention) of IPC and sec 66 D of Information Technology Act.