Delhi Police arrested three men and busted a pan-India job racket that was allegedly being run in connivance with a Chinese module, officials said on Friday. The accused — Abhishek Garg (40), Satish Yadav (36) and Sandeep Mahla (32) — were allegedly running a pan-India online part-time job racket in the name of Amazon. They were arrested following raids in Delhi, Gurgaon and Fatehabad.
The syndicate’s suspected mastermind operated from Georgia and a base in Dubai. A ‘lookout circular’ and other legal action are being initiated to nab him, the police said. They syndicate allegedly created a fictitious website designed by China-based developers. It’s link was shared through a Telegram ID whose IP address was also traced to China. The module was formed and modulated from China, they added.
The accused used YouTube, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and other social media platforms to promote their website and dupe people. The police initiated a probe after a woman from Rohini in Delhi complained in September that she was duped with a part-time online job offer at Amazon and cheated of Rs 1,18,000 through an ad on Instagram.
The IP address of the Telegram ID used by the scammers was traced to Beijing (China). The WhatsApp number used to defraud the victims by luring them to invest in a fake Amazon website was also operated from outside India, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer North) Devesh Kumar Mahla said.
According to information received from the bank, a shell company account in the name of ‘Krishna Enterperises’ was used to accumulate the defrauded money. While examining the account details, it was found that over Rs 5.17 crore was credited in September alone. The money trail also revealed that the entire amount was siphoned off through seven different companies to overseas accounts using cryptocurrency, the senior officer said.
The accused were nabbed based on technical investigation and call detail records. They created fake Amazon websites developed in China and promoted their projects on social media by posting lucrative job offers, Mahla said while explaining the group’s modus operandi. Artificial Intelligence that enabled their website link to pop-up for people looking for work-from-home or online jobs was also used, he said.
“They reached out to the victims through WhatsApp automatically or, in some cases, the victims approached them. The victims were convinced with fake WhatsApp chat screenshots of employees earning good money,” Mahla added. To keep the victims in the dark, the syndicate developed a full-proof procedure that genuine companies use to run their organisation — such as providing a tutor to teach them how to work for which a nominal amount of Rs 200 would be charged.
Any aspirant will pay such a nominal amount to get a job with ease. The victims were asked to create a work ID on the website. The wallet was also designed to look like Amazon where users could see options such as balance, tasks, order, withdrawal, selling and flagging products, the senior police officer said.