Udupi, Aug 1: Over 25 people from Udupi and Vijayapura districts have fallen prey to a hoax advertisement that was published in a Kannada newspaper on job vacancies in the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.
The advertisement in the newspaper announces job vacancies in the forest department and lists two STD mobile numbers for contact along with the e-mail ID – [email protected]
It is learnt that the fraudsters operated from a fake address in Noida in Uttar Pradesh. When contacted on the published mobile numbers, a person going by the name Gautham Kumar would speak to the caller and instruct him to deposit an initial sum of Rs 2,000 to a bank account in State Bank of India (SBI) belonging to Somanath Mohinta with the A/c number - 34676240066, to obtain the registration form for the job vacancy.
Fake job offer letters, insurance policy
On receiving the deposit of cash, a fake registration form with the masthead bearing the Ministry of Environment and Forests logo was sent through email service. After filling and submitting the form online, a fake job offer letter was sent directly to the residential address of the applicant!
Unwittingly, the applicant would deposit a sum of Rs 19,500 to the same bank account as instructed by the fraudsters – as charges for the alleged requisite training and equipment such as laptop and mobile phone.
As soon as this amount was deposited by the applicant, there would be a request for deposit of a further sum of Rs 20,500 for a fake life insurance policy. After this, there would a further request to deposit another sum of Rs 60,000.
In this manner, several gullible job applicants were duped of their money until they stopped depositing additional amounts of money. While some victims began to grow suspicious about the requests for cash deposits, some others even deposited the amount of Rs 60,000 as requested.
However, there was no further correspondence with the fraudsters. Only when the victims approached and enquired with the local forest department officials, they were informed that there was no such recruitment process initiated either by the state or central government as originally advertised in the newspaper.
Officials from the forest department in Udupi and Vijayapura districts said that they had been approached by several youth enquiring of such a recruitment process. A youth from Udupi finally lodged a complaint at Kundapur police station alleging that he had been duped by fraudsters. The police have registered a case in this regard.
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