In a major crackdown on cyber fraud, Delhi Police has busted a fake job racket and arrested nine individuals, including the mastermind, an employee of a telecom service provider, and seven women telecallers.
The accused were allegedly running an illegal call centre in West Delhi, posing as recruiters for reputed airlines, including IndiGo, and duping job seekers under the pretext of offering employment opportunities.
While speaking to the NDTV, Additional DCP of South District Sumit Jha said, "The accused lured victims through fake advertisements on OLX and other job portals. They would conduct telephonic interviews posing as airline officials and demand money from the applicants under various pretexts such as processing fees, uniform charges, and salary account openings."
He said the victims were defrauded of small amounts ranging between Rs 2,500 and Rs 15,000 at multiple stages.
Acting on a complaint filed by a victim who lost Rs 11,000 in a similar job scam, police traced the suspects to the Subhash Nagar and Tilak Nagar areas.
A raid led to the arrest of the kingpin, Vikash Kumar, alias Vickey (38), and his associate Baljeet Singh (31), an employee of a telecom company who allegedly issued fraudulent SIM cards using customers' biometric data.
Subsequent raids at Ganesh Nagar and Tilak Nagar led to the arrest of seven female telecallers identified as Charanjit, alias Charu, Shalini Bhardwaj, Aarti Kaur, Palveen Kaur, Nandini, Pooja Gupta, and Shweta alias Shivani Singh.
They were allegedly hired through job portals and paid Rs 15,000 per month to contact and convince job seekers.
The police also recovered 22 mobile phones, a desktop computer, 19 SIM cards, QR codes of multiple bank accounts, eight UPI IDs resembling airline names, and a Wi-Fi router from their possession. Technical analysis also revealed over 40 complaints linked to the accused on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) from across different states.
According to Delhi Police sources, the racket had been active for over a year, targeting unemployed youth across India. The fraudsters used small-value transactions to avoid detection, exploiting victims' hesitation to report minor financial losses.
