Pramesh S Jain
The Adugodi police on tuesday arrested a BTech graduate and 11 of his associates who were allegedly operating a cyber fraud fake job racket that lured youngsters on the pretext of offering online jobs.
The police nabbed the accused while investigating a cheating case filed by a woman who was allegedly promised a job by the group.
The prime accused,Harshavardhan Ojha,25, from Ballia, UP, a BTech graduate,roped in a labour contractor,Sonu Baiju Lal, 27,from Mumbai,Maharashtra,and 10 of his friends who were unemployed from his hometown to run the racket.
Sonu Baiju Lal was assigned to get the bank accounts of labourers working under him to put the money.
The other accused are Akash Kumar Yadav,23, a BA graduate and his associates,Gorakhnath Yadav,20,a PU dropout,Sanjeeth Kumar Yadav,25,PU dropout,Akash Kumar Singh,19,Amit Yadav,19,Gourav Pratap Singh,22, Brijesh Singh,20,Raj Mishra,21,Tushar Mishra,and Goutam Shailesh,who PU drop outs used to work as tele callers to lure gullible people offering jobs online.
The police have recovered 400 SIM cards,140 ATM cards,17 cheque books,27 mobile phones,and Rs.15,000 cash from them.
The accused used to call people offering jobs online, and lure them to pay a joining fee and deposit money later to get the profits.
Using a similar modus operandi,the accused had cheated a resident of Adugodi,offering a work-from-home project and cheated her of Rs.5 lakh .
Based on the complaint,the police tracked down Sonu Baiju in Maharashtra through the money trail and later tracked down Harshavardhan and others in different parts of UP.
The accused were operating the racket for the last 2.5 years, and efforts are on to track down their criminal background through the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal to ascertain their criminal background,DCP,Southeast Division,Sara Fatima,said, adding that the accused may have cheated many people across India.
