The cyber wing of the city crime branch has arrested four African for allegedly running interstate job racket. The police have recovered data of over 27,000 aspirants from them and suspect that the gang has duped thousands of job seekers in the last couple of years.
The four who were arrested on Wednesday are identified as Michael Olayeni (32), Sotomiwa Thompson (25) and Opeyemi Ohunmoroti (26) who are Nigerians while Augustin Williams (22) who is from Sierra Leone, said police.
In August last year, the gang members posing as officials of Hilton hotel in Canada approached a Chembur resident who was looking for a job in the hotel industry. The victim Vishal Mandavkar, 30, had uploaded his profile on various job-seeking portals.
The gang offered him a job of manager at the hotel and also sent him an appointment letter following an interview. The fraudsters then gave him a number of 'diplomat' Mark Brown and asked Mandavkar to contact him for visa formalities. According to the police, Brown made him pay Rs 17.22 lakh for various reasons including visa fees, program fees, employment authorization and so on.
He even demanded money on the pretext of some RBI report, it is when Mandavkar got suspicious and contacted his friend who is in RBI. His friend told him that this was a fraud and asked him to approach the police.
During the investigation, police traced the accused and arrested them from Undri in Pune. From them, police have seized 14 mobile phones, 4 laptops and a couple of memory cards, routers, pen drives and 4 sim cards.
"While checking their laptops we have found data of around 27, 000 aspirants from 48 different countries. It was also revealed that the gang has contacted around 2,000 of them and suspected to have duped many people," said Milind Bharambe, joint commissioner of police, crime branch.
It was also revealed that the fraudsters have 64 accounts in 12 nationalised banks in the country in which they have transferred Rs 2.75 crore. While the accused were also operating two accounts in Dubai and one in Nigeria in which they have transferred Rs 10 crore, we are trying to freeze these accounts said police.
In the wake of increasing cybercrime and cases of job frauds, the police have issued guidelines and urged people to refrain from clicking unverified links and used authentic sites. The police have also asked people to not to pay any fees before physical interactions.
