Conmen Eye Job Seekers, 3 Fake Recruiters Arrested by Agra Police

If you are looking for a job on an employment website chances are high that you might get in touch with a scammer first instead of a genuine recruiter. Cyber criminals have made account on leading job portals and have downloaded resume of thousands of job seekers to cheat them.

Cyber experts claim that it is a double whammy for those who have lost their job due to slow-down caused by the coronavirus. Many lost their jobs during lockdown to check the spread of Covid-19  and now when market is opening up conmen posing as employers are cheating them. The revelation was made after Agra Police arrested three conmen who had cheated thousands of innocent job seekers.

According to the Agra Police, they had received many complaints of people getting cheated on the pretext of lucrative jobs. Job seekers would get a call from scammer posing as official of leading brand or consultant. After a few round of telephonic interview scammers would demand money as service charge, documentation, processing fee etc. Desperate job seekers used to fall in their trap and would send the money.

HOW THE SCAM WORKS:

To get the numbers of the job seekers, these conmen first spend Rs 60,000 to get access of Shine.com database. The police said, after becoming the member they could easily download as many resumes they wanted. Once they use to download the documents based on the profile of candidate they would call and offer a job.

Officer said a candidate with IT background was called on behalf of Wipro, HCL, and Infosys etc, similarly mechanical engineers got calls from auto giants like Maruti, Honda, Bajaj, and Yamaha. These con artists have got script and fake documents ready for all the companies.

“The gang operates very professionally. They have created fake id, accounts, SIM and address to avoid getting caught. They used to demand Rs 2,000-5,000 for commission or service fee. If the candidate would make the payment they would demand another lot of money as processing or documentation fee. The gang would demand money from the candidate till the last. In fact they have cheated people by claiming to refund the money and sending QR code for transactions but instead of candidate getting the refund they would further siphon off the fund,” said the officer investigating the case.

The mastermind of the gang Manoj Kumar and his associates Neeraj and Manoj has been arrested. Mastermind hails from Delhi and had bought luxurious KIA Seltos from the money made through scam.

Meanwhile Shine.com on its website said, “We have observed that from time to time, fake job postings are listed online and non-existing job offers are sent via email to illegally collect personal information and/or money from unsuspecting job seekers. Please note that Shine.com does not approve of, or represent any employer or recruiter sending such fraudulent communication, which in fact are a violation of our Terms and Conditions.”

Here are some tips to help you deal with suspicious Job offers, Links or mails

• Any offer appearing too good to be true, must be cross checked before any communication with the originator of such offers / contents.
• Do not give your identification information unless you are confident that the other party is who they claim to be. For example, you could ask them for a call-back number to use for verification purposes.
• Be careful when providing credit card or bank information, or engaging in any monetary transactions. Be sure to verify the legitimacy of the employer with whom you are interacting.
• Do not provide any non-work-related personal information (e.g., Identification no, eye color, marital status, etc.) over the phone or online.
• Be aware of any job offerings which arrive in e-mail unsolicited and ultimately require anyone to pay a fee in advance, particularly if the fee is asked to be paid through a financial services or if one must pay the amount to a bank or person in a third country that is suspiciously unrelated to either party.

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