9 held for running ‘fake’ job racket posing as airline recruiters in Delhi

Nine members, including the mastermind, of a fake job racket have been arrested for allegedly duping job seekers by posing as recruiters for reputed airlines, the Delhi Police said on Saturday.

The gang had set up a fake call centre at Tilak Nagar, from where they contacted job seekers through online advertisements.

“They offered non-existent jobs in IndiGo Airlines and extracted money from the victims on the pretext of security deposits, uniforms and salary-account charges," Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Ankit Chauhan said in a statement.

The accused have been identified as Vikash Kumar, alias Vickey (38), the mastermind, Baljeet Singh (31) and seven women — Charanjit alias Charu (29), Shalini Bharadwaj (33), Aarti Kaur (19), Palveen Kaur (19), Nandini (24), Pooja Gupta (21) and Shweta, alias Shivani Singh (21).

The accused used to target unemployed youngsters looking for jobs online. The victims were induced to make payments ranging between Rs 2,500 and Rs 15,000 at different stages of the fake recruitment process.

They were made to believe that they were being hired by reputed companies, the DCP said.

“The accused had created UPI IDs resembling IndiGo Airlines’ names, such as indigoavations@okaxis and avationair3521@oksbi, to gain the victims’ trust," Chauhan said.

The police said Kumar, a telecom employee, was arrested after a technical analysis traced the location of fraudulent transactions to Subhash Nagar and Tilak Nagar.

Following his interrogation, the seven female telecallers were apprehended from the fake call centre.

Singh was found to have fraudulently issued SIM cards by misusing biometric data of genuine customers, the police said, adding that he played a crucial role by providing pre-activated SIM cards that enabled the racket to operate undetected.

The police have seized 22 mobile phones, a desktop, 19 SIM cards, call registers and a Wi-Fi router. Besides, eight UPI IDs, a QR-code linked to various bank accounts have also been unearthed. More than 40 complaints linked to the accused have been traced on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP).

A case has been registered under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and further investigation is on to identify the other members of the syndicate and trace the victims.

Delhi