Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha Polic has unearthed a major job fraud racket and arrested the mastermind from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh as the gang duped over 50,000 aspirants from Odisha and other states.
Apart from Odisha, desperate and innocent job seekers in states like Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal were targeted and duped by the fraudsters.
Over 50,000 job seekers from across the country were estimated to have been duped by the gang members and the amount is in crores, EOW DIG J N Pankaj said.
The arrested accused was identified as Zafar Ahmed (25), a resident of Aligarh and an engineer (B Tech) by profession.
The group members had been duping innocent youth by luring them with job offers after creating fake government website. The modus operandi of the racket was to develop website resembling government sites displaying job advertisements to attract job seekers.
A group of highly tech savvy people including engineers ran the racket from Uttar Pradesh with the help of some website developers, he said, adding that around 50 call center employees assisted the core group.
These employees were paid Rs15,000 per month and were of Jamalpur and Aligarh Locality of Uttar Pradesh. More than 1000 fake SIMs cards and 530 mobile phones were used by the fraudsters. They used WhatsApp voice calls by using fake SIMs and took adequate steps to avoid detection.
Around 100 mule bank accounts were used in racket and the fraudsters used to withdraw money only from “Jan Seva Kendra” using the QR code of Jan Seva Kendra and mule account, sources said.
