A job racket operating in the name of the Union health ministry cheated at least 27,000 applicants by collecting a registration fee totalling about Rs 1.09 crore in just about a month, the Delhi Police’s cyber cell said on Thursday after nabbing five suspects.
Purely in terms of the number of identified victims, the police said that it was one of the biggest job frauds ever busted by the force.
The police said since the masterminds legally operated a centre that conducted online recruitment examinations for government and private agencies, they had access to personal data of job-seekers to whom they sent targeted messages of job offers.
In one month, the gang allegedly sent out 15 lakh SMSs with links to two fraudulent websites for registration for 13,000 vacancies, including posts such as accountants, data entry operators, nursing midwives and ambulance drivers, police said.
“The websites were designed so convincingly that some news and job information portals believed these openings to be genuine. They ended up amplifying the news of these fake jobs,” said Anyesh Roy, deputy commissioner of police (cyber cell).
Roy said the two fake websites operated by the gang to draw their victims were www.sajks.org and www.sajks.com. Both mentioned they were under the Ministry of health and family welfare.
SAJKS stood for Swasthya Avm Jan Kalyan Sansthan. Neither of the two websites were functional anymore when HT tried to access them on Thursday.
The crime came to notice mid last month when an applicant decided to approach Delhi Police with a complaint that he received no response after paying Rs 500 as registration fee. Since the registration fee ranged only between Rs 100 and 500, the fraudsters believed victims wouldn’t approach the police, said Roy.
The police registered a case and began collecting digital footprints of the suspects and their money trail.
The investigation revealed that a bank account was opened in Haryana’s Hisar district in the name of Swasthya Sanstan, a name consistent with the fake website.
“Soon, we got to know that money being deposited into this account by job applicants was being withdrawn from ATMs every day. On Tuesday, we laid a trap at one such ATM in Hisar and caught one suspect red-handed while he was withdrawing the money,” Roy said.
The role of that nabbed suspect, 27-year-old Amandeep Khetkari, was just to withdraw money on a daily basis and distribute it to members of the gang, said the officer.
At Khetkari’s instance, four more men were arrested.
According to police, the arrested men included two website designers, Sandeep and Joginder Singh, the bank account holder Surender Singh and the mastermind Ramdhari, 50.
Delhi police have registered a case after the Delhi international airport operator filed a complaint about a fake website advertising about vacancies at the airport and asking applicants to pay Rs 1,000 as enrolment fee..
DCP (IGI ) Rajeev Ranjan said a case under various sections of the IPC and Information Technology Act was registered on a complaint filed by the chief legal office, Delhi airport. In its complaint on Monday, the airport operator said a lookalike of the GMR website was luring, duping and obtaining money from job seekers.
“The fraudsters published fake advertisement pertaining to various job openings and job offer in GMR Group on their careers page with a provision for collecting Rs 1000 as application fee through online payment mode. A total 2,201 job vacancies are published in the fake website ..,” the complaint reads.
with inputs from Anvit Srivastava
