Four held for duping unemployed youth of money on promise of jobs

The suspects used to give fake receipts of job portals to the youth who would only realise much later that they had been duped

The Gautam Budh Nagar police on Thursday arrested four people for allegedly duping unemployed youth of large sums of money on the promise of providing them with jobs.

The four suspects in custody. (Sunil Ghosh/ HT Photo)

According to police, on May 2, Sunil Chand, a resident of Bahlolpur village in Sector 63, gave a written complaint against two suspects identified by their first names as Abhishek and Alok. “The complainant alleged that the suspects took ₹67,000 from him on the pretext of providing him a job at a reputed organisation,” said Rambadan Singh, deputy commissioner of police, Central Noida.

In his complaint, Chand told the police about the location of the office from where the suspects were operating. “Based on that information, a raid was conducted on the premises in Sector 60, Noida, and four people were found sitting in different cabins, working on desktops, mobile phones and walkie-talkies. On being interrogated, the four admitted to have defrauded Chand of money. One of the suspects, who is the mastermind, was identified as Alok Singh, a resident of Noida, who has also been to jail in the past from Chandigarh in a case of fraud,” said Singh.

The other three suspects were identified as Abhishek Singh, a resident of Ghaziabad, Satish Singh and Umesh, both residents of Nodia.

Upon further inquiry, police learnt that Alok is a Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) graduate and in order to earn quick money, started a fake call centre in Noida about five months ago.

“He hired some people to work with him and they were trained on how to steal data of applicants from job portals. They would then call these youths and offer them jobs in reputed companies, according to their educational qualifications. In the name of processing charge, they would take ₹1,900 and after that, on the pretext of verification, updating resume and so on, they would take more money from the victims,” said the DCP.

The suspects used to give fake receipts of job portals to the youth who would only realise much later that they had been duped.

“In order to evade police radar, the suspects used to change their office location every month. The local police is trying to find out the number of people duped by the suspects and at what places the call centre had operated previously. During interrogation, Alok admitted to have cheated about 100-200 people over the past five months, and swindling at least ₹20,000 from each of them. The highest rate they ever charged a victim was ₹1 lakh,” said Singh.

The suspects were booked under sections of cheating, breach of trust and forgery of documents of the Indian Penal Code.