Police in Ghaziabad have busted a fake call centre that operated for nearly a year and a half under the cover of a fox nut, or makhana, trading business, arresting 20 people, including 17 women, on allegations of defrauding job seekers of crores of rupees with fabricated employment offers in India and the Gulf. The bust, at a residential premises in Rajendra Nagar, Sahibabad, exposed an operation that had built enough of a legitimate front to avoid detection for well over a year.
A Trading Firm as Cover
Investigators allege the network operated through a registered firm called Jainson International, which on paper conducted a makhana business but in practice ran a full-scale fraudulent recruitment call centre from the same premises. The accused named by police include Abhishek Jain, his wife Hina, Sunil Jain, Piyush Jain and Salim, alongside a number of other alleged associates arrested during the raid.
According to the preliminary investigation, the accused obtained the personal data of job seekers by scraping employment portals and recruitment websites before contacting them directly through the call centre with tailored, attractive employment offers, a method that allowed the operation to target candidates already actively searching for work rather than relying on cold outreach alone.
Women Posing as Recruiters and Engineers
Investigators allege that several women employed at the call centre posed as software engineers or recruitment consultants while speaking with victims, lending the calls a credibility that a generic sales pitch would have lacked. The callers allegedly promised jobs both within India and in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, collecting between ₹50,000 and ₹1 lakh from candidates and their families under the guise of processing charges and placement fees. According to the allegations, no jobs materialised and none of the money was ever returned.
Police said 24 complaints linked to the network have already been registered on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, and investigators believe the total fraud could run into several crores once financial transactions and digital records are fully examined. Authorities are also probing whether the women employed at the call centre, who allegedly earned monthly salaries between ₹15,000 and ₹30,000, were aware of the fraudulent nature of the operation or were themselves employees unaware of the scheme’s true purpose, a distinction likely to shape how each individual case proceeds.
What Was Seized
The raid yielded 12 laptops, 23 smartphones, 12 keypad phones, 47 SIM cards, 16 debit cards, 10 official stamps, eight chequebooks, a large quantity of alleged forged voter identity cards, two printers and a car. The presence of forged identity documents alongside official-looking stamps suggests the operation may have gone further than verbal promises, potentially issuing fabricated offer letters or documentation to reinforce its credibility with victims. The seized devices are now undergoing forensic examination to identify additional victims and trace the network’s wider reach.
A Pattern With Legal Guardrails Already in Place
Fake overseas job offers have become one of the fastest-growing categories of cyber-enabled fraud in India, particularly for Gulf-bound roles where the financial stakes and desperation of job seekers are often highest. What makes such schemes especially exploitable is that many victims are unaware of the legal framework meant to protect them: under the Emigration Act, recruiters sending workers to Gulf countries are required to register on the government’s eMigrate portal, and service charges for skilled workers are statutorily capped, typically around ₹30,000, well below the ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh this network allegedly charged per candidate.
The Future Crime Research Foundation said fake job offers have emerged as one of the fastest-growing forms of cyber-enabled financial fraud, with criminals exploiting the desperation of job seekers by demanding advance payments for processing, visas or document verification. Experts advised applicants to independently verify recruiters through official channels such as the eMigrate portal before making any payment, and to treat unsolicited offers with pre-payment demands as an immediate red flag regardless of how legitimate the recruiter’s presentation appears.
