Hyderabad: Job seekers prime targets

Hyderabad: Cyber criminals target fresh graduates and job seekers by collecting their details from job portals and sending them bogus job offers. They ask them to make certain payments after which they send them fake appointment letters. The cyber crime police say that online job frauds are the most consistently reported crimes in the city.

“Crooks send spoof emails and make them look like emails from MNCs. The scammers even conduct fake interviews over the phone and send the candidates fake offer letters. The victims of these scams are asked to pay thousands of rupees,” says a Cyber Crime Inspector. He cautions all job seekers to verify job offers with the actual companies, especially when they are asked to pay money.

P. Ravi Kiran, the Inspector of the Cyber Crime Police Station of Hyderabad, says, “The men who operate such scams are well educated, they are usually graduates. They know exactly whom to target and how.”

The Central Crime Station (CCS) Police of Hyderabad recently nabbed Rinku Thakur, 23, and Rishab Suri, 22, residents of Ashok Vihar in New Delhi who had been sending fraudulent job offers to people. “They paid for and download data from various job portals. They then contacted job seekers posing as HR managers of reputed software companies. Since the email IDs used by them looked like those of the actual HR officials of the companies, the victims fell into their trap and agreed to pay them money. A victim paid them Rs 4 lakh. She later realised that she had been cheated and lodged a complaint,” an official said.

The duo cheated dozens of job seekers in a similar manner. Once the victims deposited the money they switched off their mobile phones and ended communication.

In March, cops nabbed two other conmen who claimed to be calling from naukri.com and asked  victims to pay nearly Rs 1 lakh  as the required fee. 

Job frauds trap the educated too 
According to cybercrime investigators, even educated people fall prey to the fraudsters. The police has asked job seekers to be cautious when they receive job offers on phone or email.

“Most of the calls come from New Delhi and Ghaziabad. The fraudsters are notorious for accessing a candidate’s data and analy-sing their resumes before initiating a conversation,” says a Cyber Crime Inspector. The scammers often run call centres as covers. 

Steve Abraham, a B.Com. graduate,  says that he registered his details on a few job portals shortly after his graduation in June. “I received an email asking me to register with a consultancy firm.  The next day, I got a call from a landline number in Ghaziabad. The person said that he was calling from a consultancy which had tied up with aviation job providers. I was ecstatic at the idea of working at an airport, and so I chose a ground staff position. I was asked to pay Rs 1,700 initially, as a refundable examination fee. After a week, they informed me that I had cleared the test. I was then asked to pay Rs 65,000 as job confirmation fees. After I sent them over Rs 1 lakh, they switched off their phone numbers and stopped replying to my emails,” he says.