Mastermind, associate of int’l job racket arrested by crime branch

Mumbai police arrest duo for duping job seekers promising high-paying jobs in Thailand. Recruits forced to work in fake call centers in Laos.

MUMBAI: The Mumbai police’s crime branch has arrested two persons for allegedly duping hundreds of job seekers across India by offering them high-paying jobs in Thailand. The duo – identified as Jerry Philips Jacob, the mastermind, and his associate Godfrey Thomas Alvaris – were arrested on Monday after they arrived in Mumbai from Laos, where they had been staying since 2021. They were produced in court on Tuesday and remanded in police custody till March 30.

HT Image

Jacob was on the radar of central agencies and the Mumbai police had kept close watch on him and his associate prior to their arrest owing to over 50 complaints against them, said Lakhmi Gautam, joint commissioner of police, Mumbai crime branch.

The duo sourced recruits through placement agencies across India, transported them to Bangkok with the help of Chinese nationals and took away their passports once they reached the destination. Recruits were then taken to the neighbouring Laos by boat and made to work in fake call centres that duped American and British nationals by asking them to invest in cryptocurrency, said Gautam.

Siddharth Yadav, 23, a resident of Wagle Estate in Thane, narrated the modus operandi of the accused in detail in his complaint to the police, based on which the crime branch registered an FIR against Jacob, Alvaris and a third accused known as Sunny, a placement agent. Jacob and Alvaris were arrested in connection with this case.

In his complaint, Yadav said he was searching for a job in 2022 when he met an agent named Rohit, who told him that Jacob was looking for employees for a call centre in Thailand that sold cryptocurrency. He was promised a salary of ₹65,000 per month and asked to leave India on December 30, 2022. Yadav paid the agent ₹50,000 to get the job and booked two flight tickets as per instructions – one from Mumbai to Bangkok and the other from Bangkok to Chiang Rai, a city near the borders of Laos and Myanmar. A Chinese national received him in Chiang Rai and dropped him at the immigration centre along the Laos border. Another Chinese received him and other Indian recruits, mainly from Punjab and Delhi, there, collected their passports and took them to Laos on a boat.

“Yadav and the other recruits were taken to the Golden Triangle, a mountainous region straddling northeastern Myanmar, northwestern Thailand, and northern Laos,” said a police officer. “Godfrey and Sunny, whom they met at this location, gave them computers and iPhones and asked them to create fake accounts using names of US, Canadian and European women on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.”

The recruits had to chat with the victims, befriend them and lure them into investing in cryptocurrency by downloading an application on their phone. The application showed double money available in the investor’s account, but did not allow them to withdraw any money, said the police officer.

“While Yadav didn’t get any salary for the work, his conscience didn’t allow him to cheat others. He asked the men running the racket to return his passport so he could return to India. But they demanded a hefty fine. Finally, he and others wrote to the Indian Embassy, after which they were assaulted and asked to withdraw their complaints,” said the police officer.

When the local police visited the spot following the intervention of the embassy, they found 30 workers trapped under harsh conditions, tortured and asked to pay fines for leaving the job. Four workers including Yadav were deported to India.