Bhopal: Job websites have played a major role in many people’s career for finding good job through various helps by these websites. But it seems that the job websites are also playing a vital role for the cyber criminals in duping the job-seekers on pretext of providing them jobs.
On Tuesday, the state cyber police arrested an 18-year-old youth accused of duping a Bhopal-based man of Rs 8 lakh on pretext of providing him job. The victim was asked to deposit the amount to given bank account numbers in the name of procession fees, security fees and bond money. The accused had called the victim by disguising himself as a representative of job website named Shine.com which is one of the most popular job-websites in India. The accused during the interrogation confessed that he got the victim’s bio-data from the job-website in which he had put that to seek job opportunities.
In another incident based on job-websites, last month in May, the state cyber cell claimed to bust a sex-racket in Bhopal in which it arrested nine accused including a BJP office bearer and freed four women hailing from Maharashtra, Maghalaya and Madhya Pradesh. In this incident too, the accused had trapped the victim women in to the sex-racket by extracting their bio-data which they had put on various job websites. The accused after getting their bio-data used to call the women to Bhopal on pretext of job interviews in hotels, receptions of different companies and in beauty parlours.
Speaking on the issue, superintendent of police, Cyber Cell, Shailendra Singh Chouhan said that the cyber-criminals get the bio-data of the victims with the help of an insider hand.
“There is no doubt that the cyber criminals get the data with the help of one of the staff members of the job-websites. They mainly target the job-seekers because they are the most gullible and vulnerable ones. The criminals know that they are desperate to get a job and when they would make a false call for jobs to them they would do whatever they would asked to do,” said Chouhan adding that the bank accounts on which the criminals ask their victims to deposit the money are also opened on fake documents.
He further said that the banks need to take more responsibility to curb such crimes.
“In most of the cases it has been found that the bank accounts used by the criminals were opened by depositing fake documents. The banks should do thorough verification of the documents before opening the accounts. In these cases we also serve notice to the job-websites from where the bio-data are leaked to the criminals as it shows that there is definitely a loophole within their own organisation due to which such leak is happening,” he added.
Asking the people including the job-seekers to be aware against such calls, Chouhan said that they should take some precautions to avoid themselves from falling in the trap of fraudsters.
“After getting call, the potential victims whould always check that the contact number is actually from the company from which the accused claims to call exists with the company or not. If its not, then should stop all further communications with them immediately. Secondly, the companies which genuinely offers job would never ask them to deposit money in any bank accounts in the name of processing fees or secuirty fees. If also they ask them to deposit any amount for official purpose then they would ask them make the payment through their designated payment gateways. They would never ask them to deposit in any bank account or any e-wallet which the criminals mainly do. They should also inform the police to help in nabbing the accused,” said Chouhan.
