The city police have arrested four persons, one of them a woman, in connection with a recruitment fraud involving Wipro Technologies. The accused allegedly duped 37 job aspirants of lakhs — cheating each of at least Rs. 1.80 lakh — on the pretext of providing them employment in the IT major.
The police confiscated, among other things, Rs. 44.43 lakh in cash, fake job offer letters bearing the Wipro logo.
Police Commissioner B.G. Jyothi Prakash Mirji named the arrested as Rajiv Ranjan Choube (30) of Bihar, Mohammed Azhar Sherriff (25) of Andhra Pradesh, Sathyapriya Mullaivallan (25) of Tamil Nadu and M.N. Narayanan (29) of Kerala.
According to Mr. Mirji, the four had been duping gullible jobseekers on the pretext of providing them employment at Wipro Technologies. It helped them that Sathyapriya had been running a placement agency, Lotus Consultancy, luring jobseekers by placing ads in various newspapers and websites. Police have sealed the agency.
Modus operandi
Assistant Commissioner of Police (Madivala subdivision) H. Subbanna said Sathyapriya would lure jobseekers and collect documents, including original certificates, with the promise to get them jobs in Wipro's various offices across Bangalore.
After collecting the documents, she would then accompany the jobseekers to various Wipro campuses. There her accomplices would meet them, posing as Wipro personnel, an officer attached to the Koramangala Police Station told The Hindu .
They would arrange “interviews” for the jobseekers at cafeterias or any nearby eateries with one of their accomplices, who posed as an employee of Wipro's Human Resource Development (HRD) division. The accused, after conducting the “interviews”, would then disappear into Wipro's campuses misusing the vendor entry passes.
Joining date
“The four would then hand over to the victims appointment letters for the post of software trainee engineers with an annual package of at least Rs. 2.94 lakh,” the officer said, and added that they took care to ask them to report for work in September.
Their preys were usually jobseekers who have not scored well in exams.
The scam came to light when the IT firm, after receiving complaints from the victims, alerted the police. The police conducted an inquiry and arrested the four in Tamil Nadu and Bihar.
Wipro cautions
Meanwhile, Dirk Lewis, Wipro Technologies International PR, said: “We take our responsibility in these matters very seriously and reiterate that we do not charge any fee or collect any deposit from candidates for jobs at the company — whether applying or successful.”
In a press release, he also advised all candidates not to approach third parties for jobs at Wipro.
