Grounded: Crooks who offered airline jobs

NEW DELHI: Two college dropouts and 10 others have been arrested for running a fake call centre and duping people on the pretext of giving them jobs in leading airlines. They used to pose as human resource department personnel of the airlines and call aspirants for conducting fake interviews after collecting their details from job portals.
The prime accused have been identified as Surjeet (24) from Firozabad and Sundaram Gupta (25) from Ghaziabad. “Sixteen mobile phones, SIM cards, a laptop, six desktop computers, routers, ATM cards and Rs 26,000 in cash has been seized from them,” said DCP (East) Priyanka Kashyap.
The cyber cell of East district started tracking the suspects after receiving a complaint from IndiGo alleging that some people were cheating job-seekers in the name of providing employment at various airports. The cheaters had also forged appointment letters and other documents of the airline.
“An FIR was registered and a team led by ACP Ved Prakash and inspector Manish Kumar started investigation. The information provided by the airline was processed and the local intelligence network was also activated,” said the DCP.
The fake call centre was located through technical surveillance and a raid was conducted on the third floor of a building in Ghazipur. Surjeet and Sundaram, along with 10 employees, including 8 women, were subsequently nabbed.
“Probe confirmed that the accused cheated a number of people on the pretext of getting them a job in IndiGo. They used to mainly target people from south India, Bihar, UP and Uttarakhand,” said Kashyap.
The fraudsters are suspected to have cheated over 500 people of over Rs 10 lakh. The duo told police that they hired the employees on a monthly salary ranging from Rs 6,000 to Rs 9,000. These young girls and boys would make calls to jobseekers and lure them in their trap.
The accused even posted ads on job portals inviting applications from jobseekers for different airlines. The victims applied on the portal by giving their contact number, email ID, address, etc following which they were contacted. The targets were lured into paying “processing fees” ranging from Rs 1,500 to Rs 30,000, depending upon their financial condition and job profile sought by them. They were then issued fake interview and appointment letters. Policemen have taken the accused on remand.