Hyderabad Software Engg duped Rs 38 lakh in a job scam

Hyderabad: The Cyberabad police busted a fake job racket and arrested three persons on 18 September.

The fraudsters had opened a fake website in the name of Careersyte and collected resumes and data from timesjob.com. They then lured several aspirants by offering them jobs at MNCs and various other fictitious firms through Careersyte and cheated them to the tune of lakhs.

The cops were acting on a complaint filed by a software engineer who had uploaded her resume on naukri.com and timesjobs.com in March 2020. She received a call in April this year from Rishab Malhotra of Careersyte.

Rishab assured her a job at MNCs like Deloitte and Accenture after paying an initial amount for registration. Two months later she again received a call from Rishab who started a conference call with Vaibhav Mahajan for an online interview. The victim was informed that she had been selected and was asked to pay Rs. 14.50 lakh, which she paid as an alleged bribe.

However, days later she received a call from Vaibhav who said that another candidate, Srikanth Reddy, had paid Rs. 24 lakh for the same job. She was told that if she wanted to job she should pay more than what Srikanth had paid. In an attempt to save her job, the victim paid Rs. 16.22 lakh to Careersyte through Razor pay. But it didn't stop there. In August, Vaibhav again demanded more money from the complainant citing the same reason and the victim paid another Rs.7.50 lakh. In total, she paid Rs. 38.18 lakh in a span of eight months before she realised she had been cheated.

Based on her complaint, the Cyberabad police arrested Shanu Ansari (23) from Uttar Pradesh who acted as the proprietor of Careersyte, Yugantar Srivastava (26), and Tushar Srivastava (20).

According to the police, Shanu Ansari and Yugantar Srivastav created the website www.carrersyte.com with a registered address in Mumbai, Maharashtra. An office was opened at Indiranagar, Lucknow, in the name of Absolute Solutions and seven tele-callers were hired. Shanu collected data of job seekers from timesjob.com by paying a nominal amount.

On the instructions of Yugantar Srivastav, tele-callers called aspirants and offered fake online services and high-paying jobs in reputed MNCs like Deloitte, Accenture, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Service.

Yugantar Srivastav conducted fake interviews, “selected” candidates, and issued fake offer letters. He asked them to send money under the guise of a registration fee, processing fee, security fee, and insurance fee. If the candidates confronted them, they convinced them that the money was refundable. In March 2020, Yugantar Srivastav contacted the victim posing as Rishab Malhotra and offered her a job in an MNC and convinced her to deposit an amount of Rs. 5,959 for registration fees.

In June, Yugantar Srivastav introduced Tushar Srivastava to the victim as Deloitte HR Vaibhav Mahajan and conducted a fake telephonic interview through a conference call. Tushar Srivastava confirmed her job at Deloitte and later Yugantar Srivastav asked her to pay Rs. 38 lakh. Later, he told her the job had been offered to another person who was ready to pay a huge amount for the same job.

She believed him and paid Rs. 38.18 lakh.

The police have issued an advisory to prevent job frauds and requested people not to respond to unknown callers who assure them jobs without any verification. Do not pay any kind of fees without verifying with the company through its official number or email, the police said, adding that no company asks money in return for jobs. Verify the genuineness of the website while searching on Google for any job and do not believe job providers when they say the fees will be refunded, the advisory stated.