Fake job portals cheated 27,000 employed people, collected Rs 1.09 crore in a month

On Thursday, the Delhi Police's cyber cell arrested five suspects who defrauded at least 27,000 applicants by depositing the registration fee of around Rs 1.09 crore in the Union Health Ministry's name.

According to a Hindustan Times report, in terms of the number of victims identified, police said it was one of the force's biggest frauds ever busted.

Police said that since masterminds legally operated a center that conducted online recruitment exams for government and private agencies, they had access to job seekers' data to whom they targeted job offers used to send messages.

In a month, the gang allegedly sent 1.5 million SMS with links to two fraud websites to register for 13,000 vacancies, including accountants, data entry operators, nursing midwives, and ambulance drivers.

"The websites were designed so strongly that some news and job information portals believed that these openings were real. They started increasing the news of these fake jobs," said Anish Roy, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber ​​Cell).

Roy said that there were two fake websites operated by the gang, www.sajks.org, and www.sajks.com, to attract his victims. Both mentioned that they were under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

SAJKS stood for Swastha Avan Jan Kalyan Sansthan. When HT tried to access them on Thursday, neither of the two websites was functional.

The crime came to light in the middle of last month when an applicant decided to approach the Delhi Police with a complaint that he did not respond after paying Rs 500 as the registration fee. Roy said that since the registration fee was only between Rs 100 and Rs 500, the fraudsters believed that the victims would not approach the police.

The police registered a case and began collecting digital footprints of the suspects and their money prints.

Investigations have revealed that a bank account was opened in the Hisar district of Haryana on a fake website called Swastha Sansthan.

"Soon, we came to know that the money being deposited in this account by job applicants was being withdrawn from ATMs every day.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 a suspect red-handed while he was extorting money," said Roy.

The officer said that the role of the 27-year-old suspect named Amandeep Khetri was only to withdraw money daily and distribute it to the gang members.

At the instance of Khetkhedi, four more people were arrested.
According to the police, those caught included two website designers Sandeep and Joginder Singh, bank account holder Surendra Singh and Mastermind.
Ramdhari, 50.

Fake website busted at Delhi Airport
Delhi Police has registered a case after the Delhi International Airport operator filed a complaint about a fake website advertisement about vacancies at the airport and asked the applicants to pay Rs 1,000 as a nomination fee.

DCP (IGI) Rajiv Ranjan said that a case under various IPC and Information Technology Act sections was registered on the complaint lodged at the Chief Legal Office, Delhi Airport. In its complaint on Monday, the airport operator said that the GMR website's lookalike is enticing, cheating, and obtaining money to job seekers.

"The fraudsters published fake advertisements related to various job openings and job offers in the GMR group on their careers page with the provision of collecting Rs 1000 as application fee through an online payment mode. A total of 2,201 job vacancies are published on fake websites." reads the complaint.