Looking For House Helps Online? You Might End Up Losing Money, Expensive Goods In The House

New Delhi: Looking for domestic help or maid-servant service online. Internet is full of options but not everyone is safe. Several fake websites have been floated by conmen who are there only to dupe you.

Recent cases show domestic helps hired online runway within a few days of employment, taking away expensive goods from the house and the fee paid by the employer.

A Kanpur resident needed fulltime maid with cooking skills. The family tried looking for an agency online. There were multiple options and he decided to call the first one on the search list. The caller assured that domestic help provided by the agency will have proper documents. After the family agreed, a man claiming to be from the agency arrived with a woman who claimed herself from West Bengal.

Thankfully the family refused the pay her monthly salary of one month and one month deposit as the agency official failed to produce police verification documents. “The woman was hired but Rs 14,000 which was to be paid was not done as there was no document. We said let the maid start working with us and we will make payment as soon her documents are shared. We were surprised that the next morning the woman was missing and some valuables were missing,” said the victim who owns a business.

The family kept calling the agency but the number was switched off following which a complaint was made in the police.

The family was not the only victim of mushrooming maid-placement fraud as the internet is full of such complaints where people have lost huge money and valuables.

What is the modus-operandi:

• Scammers make fake placement agency websites and offer services like trained and verified maids, cook and security guards.
• They sponsor their website so that all the online classified website and Google show their website on the top of the search result.
•  The agencies ask for a salary of one month as commission and keep one month salary as advance or security deposit. Maid is left at the victim’s house and would wait for an opportunity to escape from the house.
• Before fleeing, she would steal cash and gold.

According to the police, online placement agency has become a big mess as they have no physical office and all their business is done through the web. Their mobile phones are taken on fake documents after cheating a person they quickly change their number.

Police stations across different states have been receiving such complaints.

 “It is a well-planned fraud where maids are recruited through an online agency as flee with valuables or not turn up after getting the advance salary. We are trying to identify websites that are operating from our jurisdiction and verify if they are registered ones or fake. Each employer should hire any domestic help only after they are verified by the police or the agency is registered with the government, ” said Triveni Singh, Superintendent of Police, Cyber Crime, Uttar Pradesh.