The Central police arrested a man for allegedly cheating job aspirants of lakhs of rupees through a fake overseas recruitment drive as COVID volunteers to Europe through his recruitment firm on Diwan’s Road.
The arrested man was identified as Thajudheen aka Dileep, 49, of Nedumangad. C.H. Nagaraju, District Police Chief (Kochi City), had received a tip-off about a fake overseas recruitment drive being held in the city taking advantage of the pandemic. A probe conducted by the police led to the arrest.
The accused had operated a premier office and had given the staff impressive sounding names to lure job aspirants. The number of an office staffer with the fake name Manthra was publicised.
The police found that the arrested man had used more than three fake addresses, including from Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, and Delhi. He had even changed his name from Thajudheen to Dileep and also that of the name of his father. He used to lure potential victims by publicising through online platforms vacancies for COVID duty in England and The Netherlands at a salary of ₹3 lakh per month. Plus Two was set as the qualifying eligibility for the fake recruitment.
He charged a service fee of ₹70,000 for recruitment to England and ₹3 lakh to The Netherlands. Those registering for recruitment to England had to deposit another ₹10,000 and their passports while those for The Netherlands ₹30,000 and passports.
It has been found that he had registered his recruitment firm in another person's name while the rent agreement for the office building in a different name. He had no licence whatsoever for conducting overseas recruitment. Even his own staff came to know about his alleged fraud when he was arrested and brought to the office.
The office was under police surveillance for the past week. The police used youngsters as job aspirants to trap him and ascertain his details. Initially, the police collected his mobile phone number and other details by charging the office with operating in violation of COVID-19 protocol. Then he was informed about this through his staff.
He was asked to turn up at the police station to pay the fine to avert police dropping in at the registered address. Since the address was fake, the police were certain that he would oblige. As an added incentive, he was also told that if he chose to pay the fine then no ID proof would be needed.
Following this, the accused walked into the police trap and got arrested. He had been avoiding coming to Ernakulam since all the addresses he used were fake.
The operation was conducted by Ernakulam Central Assistant Commissioner K. Laljy. A team led by Central Inspector S. Vijayasankar and comprising sub inspectors Premkumar, Joseph, and Gopi, assistant sub inspectors Shaji and Dheeraj, and senior civil police officers Aneesh, Isahak, Renjith, Ignatius, Rajesh, and Aby Surendran made the arrest.
