Odisha EOW issues advisory as another accused in inter-state fake job racket held from Bihar

Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha Police claimed to have arrested another accused from Maharajganj in Siwan district of Bihar in connection with the fake job racket, operating in 17 states across the country.

Accused Amit Kumar Singh was produced before the Court of ACJM-6, Siwan and brought on transit remand to Odisha. He would be produced in the court of the SDJM, Bhubaneswar, said an EOW official.

 

Singh, an IT graduate, is the developer of the website www.grks.org of ‘Gramin Rojgar Kalyan Sansthan’ for floating fake advertisements for job. A laptop has been seized from the possession of Singh, he added.

Singh was managing the website by updating it from time to time. Besides, he was liaising with different payment gateways like Cashfree, Razorpay and Bharatpay for maintenance of wallets of Gramin Rojgar Kalyan Sansthan, said the EOW.

Singh was also responsible for giving the advertisement of the fake job racket in social media like Facebook. He was providing technical support to the job racket and getting a hefty sum of Rs 40,000 per week, added the EOW.

The Gramin Rojgar Kalyan Sansthan had a registered office in New Delhi and branch offices in Mumbai, Bhopal and Dehradun, said the official.

The scamsters had developed the website resembling a government website displaying the job advertisements similar to that of government posts.

The Gramin Rojgar Kalyan Sansthan invited application for various jobs like district and block coordinator, computer operator and block surveyor by prescribing the educational qualification and the remuneration for each post in its website.

The advertisements used to contain the name of the website www.grks.org and the job seekers were required to submit their application through online only.

To gain the confidence of the job seekers, the racket also offered reservations and concessional fees to certain sections as in the case of government recruitments. The racket used to issue advertisements in local newspapers, said the EOW.

The fraudsters used to conduct online examinations and interview too. In the website, they used to give syllabus for each post and warn the applicants about the job fraud being done in various parts of the country.

Lakhs of unemployed youths across 17 states of India, including Odisha, had applied for the posts by paying the required application fees. The applicants were made to appear the online examination but none of them was given appointment, EOW sources said.

In the process, the fraudsters were misappropriating the application fees to the tune of crores of rupees from the gullible job seekers. The amounts collected from the candidates were channelised to different accounts either controlled or managed by the fraudsters.

The fraudsters used to conduct online exams for fake scholarship schemes. They were using several shell/ sister companies for channelizing the ill-gotten money, said the EOW.

“Till now, we have information that the fraudsters had duped as many as 40,000 job seekers across 17 states of Rs 6.6 crore. Prime accused Dharampal Singh and his associate Jairam Tiwari had been arrested by the investigating agency and produced before the court,” said the EOW official.

The EOW, meanwhile, issued an advisory for the job seekers to protect them for fake job rackets.

The general public especially the job seekers should verify the authenticity of the advertisements from the concerned departments.

They can also verify the details of the agency floating such advertisements with regard to its status, functioning and limitations.

The logo/website in the advertisement should be cross checked with the authentic sources.

Any suspicious job advertisement should be brought to the notice of the law enforcement agency at the earliest, said the EOW advisory.