KOCHI: Searching for jobs on online job portals can cost you dearly during this pandemi c per iod. A 57-year-old woman who looked for jobs after opting for voluntary retirement f rom Bharat h Petroleum Corporation (BPCL ) where she worked as an engineer for nearly 25 years lost Rs 50,000 to an online jobfraud racket which contacted her offering placement in a multinational company. Her credit card details were compromised after she entered them in a link sent by the racket, asking her to complete the registration process for the job.
“I took VRS from BPCL to be with my children in Kochi after there were talks of a transfer. As jobs offering work f rom home (WFH ) options were available, I started applying in different online portals,” said Shylaja Ravi who lodged a complaint with Cyber Police Station in the city. She received a call on her mobile phone from a woman introducing herself as an executive of a leading online job portal. The caller told her that her profile matched an opening in a multinational company and she should pay a registration fee of Rs 5,000.
“I refused to pay the money and firmly told them I don’t want a job by paying registration fee. After a few days, they called up again and said that they had reduced t h e regi s t ration amount to Rs 100. I agreed to pay the amount and they sent me a link as SMS. I opened the page on my computer. The woman at the other end of the phone directed me to make payment through an option on the page. I checked it and found the amount mentioned as Rs 100. To complete the payment, I keyed in my credit card details and followed the instruction. I received an OTP on my phone for completing the transaction and entered the OTP. When the transaction was over, I received an SMS from bank saying that I did a transaction of Rs 50,000.
I raised the issue with the woman on the phone. She said it was some technical error and she would will look into it. As I was awaiting her reply, I received a series of OTPs on my phone for completing transactions of various amounts. I immediately alerted the bank, which blocked the card,” said the woman, who added that when she tried to contact the number from which she received the call, there was no response. “I contacted the online job por tal whi ch said that i t doesn’t accept any registration fee and added the link of the portal sent by the racket for registration was fake,” the woman said.
“Though the bank initially agreed to refund the money under an insurance scheme, it decided against doing so saying that I should not have typed the OTP which implied that I did the transaction voluntarily,” she added. When contacted, an officer at the cyber police station said a case has been registered and a probe is on. “It has been found that the money was withdrawn from an ATM in New Delhi after the transaction was made to a bank account through a third party digital payment platform,” said the officer, who added that people must be careful while providing debit/ credit card details on thirdparty web pages. “There are lakhs of web pages which look akin to official sites,” the officer said.