E-Paper
Chandigarh Police bust swindlers’ gang targeting job aspirants online
Chandigarh police’s cyber cell arrests five members after raids in Noida; gang ran a fake call centre to target job aspirants
Chandigarh Police’s cyber cell busted a gang running a fake call centre from Noida, duping those looking for jobs on online portals.
The team has arrested five alleged members from Noida and recovered eight mobile phones, 39 debit cards, four computers, multiple SIM cards and cheque books from them.
The accused have been identified as Rahul Kumar of Greater Noida, Vijay Kumar, Pawan Kumar, Santosh Kumar, all three residents of Vaishali Bihar and Deepak Chandra of Nauratanpur village, Bihar. Probe officials said Rahul Kumar, a Class 12 pass-out, was running the operations.
The arrests came after the complaint of Suraj Kumar, a resident of Sector 36-B, Chandigarh, wherein he said that he had uploaded his resume for jobs on the online portal Linkedin.
The complainant later received a phone call from someone posing as an employee of shine.com and offered him a job with the ICICI bank. The caller lured him with a handsome package, before asking him to deposit an amount of ₹1,39,224 in different bank accounts as fee for registration, document verification, security, among other costs.
The caller sent Suraj a fake offer letter after he made the payments. Upon realising that he had been duped, he lodged a complaint with the cyber cell in Sector 17 and a cheating case was registered on August 17.
The investigating team received a tip-off. A team led by deputy general of police (cyber crime) A Venkatesh and inspector Ranjit Singh conducted a raid in Noida on August 18 and nabbed three accused including Vijay, Pawan and Santosh Kumar using their mobile location.
During questioning, Vijay disclosed the involvement of Deepak Chandra and Rahul Kumar, who were arrested during another raid in Noida on August 21.
Chandra had earlier been booked in another cheating case last year and was out on bail.
Ran fake call centre in Noida
Probe officials revealed that the gang was running a fake call centre from Noida, registered in the name of Blue Sky Financial Services. They targeted job aspirants after downloading their resume from online portals like Linkedin.
A member would then call the targets, lure them with handsome packages and get them to deposit processing and registration fee in their bank accounts, which would often be withdrawn almost immediately after the transfers were made.
The money would eventually go to Rahul Kumar, who was running the operations.
