INDIA.Mumbai: Four foreign nationals who cheated thousands of job seekers across the globe, with the promise of jobs abroad and collected huge money from them, were arrested by the Cybercrime branch of the Mumbai Police after raiding a flat in Undri area of Pune on Wednesday.
The offence (No. 03/2021) has been registered with Cyber Police station at Bandra Kurla Complex in northwest Mumbai and the accused-Ogunsakin@michael Olayeni(32), Sotomiwa Thompson(25), Opeyemi Oadele Ogunmoroti(26), and Augustin Francis Williams(22) have been remanded to police custody. The three of the accused are originally from Nigeria and the fourth one is from Sierra Leone (West Africa).
The accused have been booked under sections 419,420,465,467,468,471,34 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66(C), 66 (D) of the Information Technology Act 2000.
The accused had gathered personal data of nearly 2700 job seekers through fake advertisements and collected crores of rupees from job seekers in the form of visa fees, program fees, employment authorization, and travel allowance, etc.
Transnational scam
The job seekers lured by the fraudsters by collecting their vital data included the applicants from 49 countries- Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Srilanka, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.
The accused had opened 64 accounts in 12 Indian banks and two foreign banks, including a bank in Dubai. While the police have sealed the accounts in 11 banks, the process of freezing the remaining accounts is on.
Accused transferred Rs. Ten crore
As many as 14 mobile phones, four laptops, three memory cards, five routers, a data card, two international SIM cards were recovered from the premises of the accused in Pune. During the investigation, the police found that the accused had transferred an amount equivalent to nearly Rs 10 crore to a Nigerian bank, a police official said.
Fake websites
The racket came to light on January 15, when a resident of Chembur in North East Mumbai- Vishal Krishna Mandavkar (30) approached the Cyber police with the complaint of online fraud. According to the police, Mandavkar had responded to the advertisements on websites such as-Linked.In,Shine.Com,jobhero.com and Monsterindia.Com for a job abroad.
The accused approached him that there are vacancies in “Hilton Hotel and Suet Canada” and asked him to mail his resume to careershiltonhotelincanada@workmail.com, After he mailed his resume, he was asked to deposit Rs 17.22 lakh as visa fee, program fee, employment authorization, and travel allowance. He was also asked to get in touch with a “diplomat” Mark Brown by name on cell phone No. 8489152803. But once the amount was paid, the contact person stopped responding to his call. The transaction between Mandavkar went on from August 04, 2020, to January 15, 2021. Having realized that he was cheated, he complained to the Cyber police.
Police officers S S Sahasrabuddhe, Sunil Patil, Nilesh Yashwantrao, Police Naik Sawant, and staff- Jadhav, Pisal, Tawade, and Nanavare skilfully detected the crime under directions of Joint Commissioner of Police(Crime) Milind Bharambe, Addl CP Viresh Prabhu, DCP (cybercrime) Rashmi Karandikar and ACP Nitin Jadhav.
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