One click on an e-commerce website helped the police bust a syndicate that duped people on the pretext of getting them jobs in a public sector Indian company.
Seven, including two officials of Ministry of Rural Development, have been arrested in connection with the case, the police said. Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Rajiv Ranjan said that two MRD officials — Jagdish Raj and Sandeep Kumar — have been arrested along with their accomplices Wasim, Ankit Gupta, Vishal Goel, Suman Saurabh and Kishore Kunal. All the accused are educated and have professional background in engineering, graphic designing among others.
They received a complaint from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) at Vasant Kunj police station stating that several persons are being cheated on the pretext of getting them jobs in the organisation as assistant engineers. “During investigation, it was revealed that they received emails from official ONGC account. The interviews were conducted at Krishi Bhawan by a man who identified himself as Randhir Singh. He had taken ₹22 lakh from the victims. After this, he went off the radar,” Mr. Ranjan said. The accused also disposed of the mobile phones used to contact the victims. The police scanned hotel booking records where the victims were called and also sought details from cab aggregators used by the accused. “Meanwhile, the police received a clue about an IP address which was used by one of the accused to browse an e-commerce website only once. The place was traced to an office in Laxmi Nagar,” the officer said, adding that the office was being run by the prime accused Kunal Kishore who assumed the identity of Randhir. On his instance, others were also arrested.
Modus operandi
Mr. Ranjan said that one Ravi Chander who runs a consultancy firm in Hyderabad used to find victims who were ready to pay to get a government job. He would refer them to Kunal who used to further tell the victims that his brother-in-law is an ONGC employee and has contacts, the police said.
“He collected education certificates and money from them. Then prepared fake interview call letters with the help of his associate Wasim who is aweb designer. They then sent the interview confirmation emails through spoofed email accounts of ONGC. These emails were created with the help of Vishal Goel who is a software engineer and has prepared an email spoofing system for the gang,” the officer said. Jagdish, being an ONGC employee, used to find venue for the interview at Krishi Bhawan and Sandeep used to facilitate entry while the others used to pose as interviewers, the police said. They are now looking for other members of the syndicate.
