BHOPAL: An alleged inter-state fake job racket, which used students as part-time employees to dupe over 100 job seekers from Maharashtra and Telangana, was busted in a joint operation by Nagpur police and Bhopal police crime branch here on Monday.
The alleged racket which has been operational since January 2017, from a call center of the website shinemployer.com, was busted following complaints by over 100 job aspirants with the Nagpur police cyber cell recently.
The two men — Dharmendra Singh (31) of MP’s Morena district and Priyesh Tiwari (24), a native of Noida — who jointly operated the fake job racket were arrested by Nagpur police.
Investigation by Bhopal police crime branch and the Nagpur police revealed that the alleged fraudster duo hired services of coaching goers and college students for Rs 5000 to Rs 6000 monthly to work as call center executives. The youngsters made phone calls to job aspirants, in Maharashtra and Telangana, who had registered with the job portal run.
Rashmi Mishra, ASP Crime-Bhopal, said, "The job portal shinemployer.com, resembled the name of a premier job portal. Due to which several job aspirants registered with the portal run by Rathore and Tiwari. To play safe, only job seekers from outside MP were registered with the portal by the fraudster duo.”
The job aspirants, spanning from graduates to engineers and MBAs were registered for one time fees of Rs 1950. Later, the youngsters working as call center executives called these registered job aspirants and asked them to pay Rs 15,000 to Rs 95,000 for fetching jobs carrying hefty pay packets. But after making the desired payments, none of the job aspirants in Maharashtra and Telangana got the jobs.
“Over 100 victims who were duped by the fake job racket of Rs 50 lakh plus subsequently reported the matter to Nagpur police cyber cell in Maharashtra, after which the Maharashtra cops tracked the fake job racket to Bhopal,” said Mishra.
Not only did the fraudster duo use services of college going youths in Bhopal as part time employees, but also used their identity cards as well as ID proofs of duped job aspirants to secured SIM cards in their names for running the fake job racket. “Surprisingly, none of the college and coaching goers ever had even a whiff about being used as instruments by the racket to dupe job seekers in other states,” said Mishra.
Over 30 cell-phones and two laptops have been seized from the call center.