Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) Odisha cracked probably the biggest job fraud racket of India.
According to reports, the EOW unearthed a huge job fraud scam being run from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh.
This scam targeted the desperate & innocent job seekers youth in at least five states i.e. Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha.
Early estimates suggest at least 50,000 job seekers youth across the country were duped and the duped amount run in Crores.
The scam was being run by a group of highly tech savvy engineers from Uttar Pradesh with the help of some expert website developers.
This core group was assisted by around 50 call center employees. These employees were paid Rs 15,000 per month and were of Jamalpur and Aligarh Locality of Uttar Pradesh.
The accused persons used more than 1000 fake SIMs and 530 handsets/ mobile for this scam.
Sources said that the accused persons were extremely clever and anticipated every move of police/ law enforcement agencies. Generally they will use only WhatsApp voice calls by using fake SIM cards.
To avoid “true caller” detection, they ensured to mark/save their mobile number related to Scheme name only. So that if someone check their name on True caller it will show the scheme name, added the source.
Around 100 mule bank accounts were used in this scam and they used withdraw 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 used to develop the website resembling a Govt website displaying the Govt job advertisement mainly targeting Health or skill department jobs, some using ‘Pradhan-Mantri schemes” to attract and deceive the job seekers.
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.
Sometimes they also used to give advertisement in local newspapers but ensured that they use fake identity and use Whatsapp call or other such systems and transact money through mule bank accounts only.
They used to charge candidates for registration to interview to training to other kinds of event ranging from Rs 3000 to 50,000 depending on to what extent candidates trust them.
Generally, they selected all the candidates registered/applied for job and to win the confidence of candidate they insisted that they work only through their official website.
The EOW would be approaching all concerned states as well as central agencies to alert them as well as to initiate investigations at their level too.
EOW was working very hard on this case for last three months to detect this case.
So far this has been the most challenging case for EOW as the scamsters are very smart and researched/ pre-empted move of law enforcement authorities. By analyzing various clues and technical and physical surveillance, we could make first arrest in this case.
EOW arrested one of the main namely Zafar Ahmed (25),s/o Zaffar Ahmad, of Civil lines, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh in connection with EOW Ps Case No.17 dated 10.09.2022 u/s 467/486/471/420/120-B IPC. He is an engineer (B. Tech) by profession and one of the main masterminds of this scam. He was produced before local court in Aligarh. The court has been pleased to grant 5 days transit remand. He will be produced before the court at Bhubaneswar.
Investigation is still going on to unearth the involvement of others and the huge amount amassed by the fraudsters in this process.