GHAZIABAD: Eight persons were arrested on the charge of duping unemployed people, police said here on Sunday.
They were running a fake call centre and cheated people on the pretext of providing them with jobs, police said.
SSP Kalanidhi Naithani said the accused were identified as Swatantra, Tushar, Vikram, Lalit, Pritam, Vishal, Sanjay and Himanshu.
Upon interrogation, they confessed to hoodwinking unemployed youth from Maharashtra, Odisha, Karnataka, Chennai, West Bengal, Hyderabad and other states, the SSP said.
Describing their modus operandi, the officer said the accused used to purchase data of unemployed people from online job portals and then used to contact them through WhatsApp.
They used to send appointment letters of multinational companies to the victims, thereafter, extorting money by online transactions in the name of registration and interview cost, the SSP told.
Police have recovered five laptops, 28 mobile phones, 71 SIM cards and Rs 55,000 in cash from them.
Fake letterheads of several companies, including Ashok Leyland, Tata and Larson & Toubro, were also recovered from them.
Seventeen people had registered FIRs under Section 420 of the IPC and the IT Act against them, Naithani added.