Bhubaneawar, December 31: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the State Crime Branch arrested Zafer Ahmed, the mastermind of job fraud, who allegedly duped over 50,000 job aspirants in five States including Odisha, from Aligarh Uttar Pradesh.
The accused was reportedly duping job aspirants in at least five States – Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha – through fake Government websites. Around 100 mule bank accounts were used in this scam, stated an EOW release on Saturday.
The scam was being run by a group of highly tech savvy engineers from UP with the help of some expert website developers. The core group was assisted by around 50 call center employees. They were paid Rs 15,000 per month and were of Jamalpur and Aligarh locality of Uttar Pradesh.
“Early estimates suggest at least 50,000 job seekers youth across the country were duped. More than 1,000 fake SIMs and 530 handsets and mobile were used for this scam. Generally, the fraudsters use only WhatsApp voice calls by using fake SIM cards. Around 100 mule bank accounts were used in this scam,” the EOW said.
They withdrew money only from “Jan Seva Kendra” using the QR code of Jan Seva Kendra and mule account. There is plethora of such “Jan seva Kendra” in UP who happily gives the cash amount taking 10% commission.
“The scamsters would develop the website resembling a Government website displaying the Government job advertisement mainly targeting health or skill department jobs, some using ‘Pradhan-Mantri schemes” to attract and deceive the job seekers,” it added.
Fake employment sites would be named like “Jeevan Swasthya Suraksha Yojana” www.jssy.in, “Bharatiya Jana Swasthya Suraksha Yojana”, www.bjsry.in, “Gramin Samaj Manav swasthya Seva” www.gsmsss.in etc.
They would charge candidates for registration to interview to training to other kinds of event ranging from Rs 3,000 to 50,000 depending on to what extent candidates trust them, it stated.
To win the confidence of candidate they insisted that they work only through their official website.
“By analyzing various clues and technical and physical surveillance, we could make first arrest in this case,” said the EOW.
