Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha Crime Branch has unearthed a huge job fraud scam, probably the biggest in the country. The scam being run from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh targeted the desperate and innocent job seekers youth in at least five states i.e. Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Odisha.
One of the main accused in the case identified as Zafar Ahmed (25) of Civil Lines at Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh has been arrested in this connection. He is an engineer (B. Tech) by profession and one of the main masterminds of this scam. He was produced before a local court in Aligarh and is being brought on transit remand for five days. He will be produced before the court at Bhubaneswar.
Early estimates suggest at least 50,000 job seekers youth across the country were duped in the scam. 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 15000 per month and were from the Jamalpur and Aligarh localities of Uttar Pradesh.
More than 1000 fake SIMs and 530 handsets/ Mobile were used for this scam. They 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 the Scheme name only. So that if someone checks their name on True caller it will show the scheme name. They maintained strict discipline not to use their personal phone. The phone used in fraud/ scam was called “Kaam wala Phone”.
Around 100 mule bank accounts were used in this scam. They will withdraw money only from “Jan Seva Kendra” using the QR code of Jan Seva Kendra and mule account. There is a plethora of such “Jan seva Kendra” in UP who happily gives the cash amount taking 10% commission. By such clever moves, they ensured they leave no trails either through phone or bank accounts.
The scamsters would develop a website resembling a Government website displaying the Government 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”, www.bjsry.in (Bharatiya Jana Swasthya Suraksha Yojana, www.gsmsss.in ( Gramin Samaj Manav swasthya Seva), etc.
Sometimes they also give advertisements in local newspapers but ensured that they will use fake identities and use Whatsapp calls or other such systems and transact money through mule bank accounts only. They will charge candidates for registration to interviews, training, and other kinds of events ranging from Rs 3000 to 50,000 depending on to what extent candidates trust them.
Generally, they would select all the candidates registered/applied for a job. To win the confidence of candidates they insisted that they work only through their official website. They will receive money from candidates in the various mule accounts only. Once they have completed the exercise suddenly the website and Call centers will go off. Then they will come up with some new websites with new schemes on the same pattern. To take extra precaution they would throw all the mobile sets/ SIMS used in the “closed operations” in the nearby rivers.
The mule bank accounts were collected by the accused from Rajasthan and the SIMS used by the fraudsters were registered in the name of innocent persons. The fraudsters had been duping people since the year 2020 and have amassed a lot of property worth crores of rupees in Aligarh with the ill-gotten money. 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, the EOW could make the first arrest in this case with the help of Aligarh Police. The investigation is still going on to unearth the involvement of others and the huge amount amassed by the fraudsters in this process.
