S. Veeraperumal, a resident of Kuniyamuthur, came to know about Ganapathy-based overseas recruitment agency Kaydins Job Solutions from his friends in early 2018. A diploma holder in electronics, the agency allegedly promised him a job in Singapore .
“The job was in CCTV and access control area. I paid ₹ 50,000 as registration fee in May 2018, after which I was asked to pay ₹ 1 lakh within 15 days. I was told that the visa will be delivered in 21 working days. In December, the recruitment agency informed that there were job vacancies in Malaysia. A medical check up was held in Chennai in February for the job. However, the agency later did not update about the job. They had cheated me and several others,” he recalls.
According to engineering graduate S. Sriram, based on whose complaint the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Coimbatore City Police arrested three persons attached to Kaydins Job Solutions, he was offered a job in a Singapore-based company with a salary of ₹ 1.30 lakh to ₹ 1.50 lakh per month. He had paid ₹ 2 lakh for the job.
“I was called by the agency in March 2018 and told about the job opportunity. I do not know from where they got my phone number. I had received similar calls from several other recruitment agencies based in Delhi, Gurgaon and Hyderabad offering jobs in countries including Australia, Singapore and Canada,” he says.
Mr. Sriram was allegedly told by the agency that they had sent several people to Malaysia and Singapore. He contacted a friend who was working in Singapore and checked the credentials of the company in which the job was offered and found that the company existed.
Also, the salary offered by the agency for the job matched with the salary provided for the job profile in Singapore.
CCB inspector J. Nagarajan says that Kaydins Job Solutions and several other recruitment agencies involved in cheating in the past have been using a similar modus operandi – collect large sums from job seekers by assuring employment and return a small portion of the amount to the aspirants citing lack of vacancies.
“The job aspirants who pay ₹ 2 lakh to ₹ 5 lakh for a job finally tend to accept whatever money they get in return from the agency, instead of approaching the police. The agencies involved in cheating return small some to previous applicants by collecting initial charges from new applicants. They usually shut down the business at a stage when they are not able to rotate the money,” Mr. Nagarajan explains .
According Mr. Nagarajan, recruitment agencies also collect the passports of job aspirants as a security while collecting the initial charges so that the aspirants remain in their circle and pay the remaining money to get the document. Apart from direct recruitment by setting up office and employing staff, recruitment scams are also thriving in online platforms.
“The process starts with giving advertisements in websites and posting contents in social media. These ‘recruiters’ often work with minimum facilities like a computer, mobile phone or tablet, create forged contents to deceive job aspirants. They create lists of companies where they have arranged jobs and non-existing memorandum of understandings. Online interviews are conducted for the jobs and sometimes they collect additional money for skipping the interview for direct ‘recruitment’. The money paid to these online players vanish in various accounts and it is difficult to trace them,” says P.A. Arun, sub-inspector with District Crime Branch of Coimbatore District Police.
According to Mr. Nagarajan, there have been instances of those arrested and jailed for job scams continuing the same business once they are released.
On July 15, the CCB arrested a man and his wife from Ganapathy Ma Nagar who were undergoing trial in connection with their arrest in another job fraud in 2016.