From a small room in a commercial building in Noida Sector 62, three women posing as HR executives at an airline company spent their days calling young jobseekers and offering them roles at Indira Gandhi International Airport. Except, the airline did not exist. Neither did the aviation institute they claimed candidates had to enrol in before joining. 

The telecallers, undergraduates aged between 20 and 25, were arrested last week, along with the alleged mastermind and two other accomplices, for duping job aspirants from Delhi, Chandigarh, Haryana and Punjab, the Delhi police said. Ten victims have been identified so far, said an officer, adding that the number may be a fraction of those cheated, with many victims deciding not to report the crime. 

The fraud is believed to have lasted four to five months, during which the accused collected between ₹7,000 and ₹10,000 from each victim as “registration” or “admission fee”, the police said.

The crime came to light after Vikas Kumar, a resident of Mantola in Paharganj, came across an Instagram advertisement on June 10 offering a job at “Bretish Airways” based at IGI Airport. After filling in his details, he received a call from a woman who introduced herself as Karishma.  She collected his PAN and Aadhaar details, marksheets, and resume via WhatsApp and told him that a diploma in aviation or airport management from “Future Wings Learning Institute” was mandatory for the job.

Mr. Kumar transferred ₹7,000 through UPI. In return, he received what appeared to be an admission slip, a no-objection certificate and a job offer. It was only later when the woman stopped answering his calls that the Paharganj resident realised that he had been cheated and that no such airline exists.

“Analysis of the mobile number, UPI transaction and website registration details led us to the accused. The payments were directly collected by the accused, which helped us trace their location,” said Additional DCP-II (Central) Prashant Choudhary.

The trail led investigators to a rented office at Gaur City Centre Mall in Noida, where mastermind Sandeep Kumar, 23, and his associate Akhil Kumar, 27, were arrested on August 18.

Subsequently, the police arrested Rakesh Kumar, 47, a website developer, who allegedly designed and hosted the fake websites for a fee, along with Shweta, Sapna and Sakshi, the telecallers.

The crackdown has so far resulted in the seizure of two laptops, eight mobile phones, eight SIM cards registered in the names of the three telecallers and two registers containing data on jobseekers.

The Delhi Police submitted its status report in the High Court in the case pertaining to a hybrid digital arrest scam where an elderly woman was forced to sell her property in south Delhi and pawn her jewellery while under digital arrest. The woman had approached the High Court for a transfer of the case to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) citing it as one of the ‘evolving’ cases due to its hybrid nature.

The counsel for the victim represented by Kush Sharma argued that the hybrid nature of the crime makes it the first documented case in India where a physical syndicate was operating during an active digital arrest. “The police report shows that the syndicate operated through a decentralised structure with separate groups responsible for victim communication, mule account holders’ recruitment and laundering of funds. The complexity of this hybrid crime makes it appropriate for CBI jurisdiction,” said Kush Sharma.

The police investigation as per status report revealed monetary transactions running into multiple layers with over ten bank accounts connected with first and second layer beneficiaries. The police tracked a phone number used to contact Sushant having an IP address based in Cambodia. The status report mentioned that the police have sent notices to account holders and are awaiting account holders’ details for some accounts.

A person named Nannu Singh, allegedly received funds as part of these transactions for his organization named ‘Savitri Bai Fule Education Welfare Society’, the report mentioned. He met at least six people who allegedly promised him to help ‘raise funds’ but disappeared after a transaction worth Rs 1 crore had been made with his account. The group was allegedly involved in buying of SIM cards and stayed at multiple hotels during the period of the scam, the report said.

The report further stated that Sushant had also received a call from a person named Nitin, claiming to be the victim’s son regarding the sale of property. Sushant told the police as mentioned in the report that he had facilitated the property deal taking the caller to be victim’s son and said that when he got to know that the victim had fallen prey to a digital scam, accompanied her to the police station for filing a complaint.

“The report however does not mention what did Sushant do with the money taken from the victim, which was first credited to her account but then withdrawn the very next day. It is clear that the syndicate had been functioning at both digital and physical level,” Kush said.

He also said that the CBI response did not come on record despite the court sending notices to them in the last hearing for submission of a response. “CBI report said that they have a threshold of Rs 10 crore and they don’t take cases for amount below that but we have argued that the case is exceptional and requires CBI jurisdiction due to its complexity,” he added.

The matter will next be heard on August 27.

Case Background

The incident took place in April this year when a 75-year-old woman living alone received a call from an unknown number wherein persons impersonating CBI told her she was found to be a part of a money laundering case and she had to deposit all her money and property with them or else her children living abroad would be expatriated back to India.

As she transferred over Rs three lakh and pawned her jewellery worth about five lakh, the scamsters told her a property dealer would visit her home to help with the sale of property. Then, a person named Sushant Kumar visited her home, took her property papers and a sale agreement was signed with another person named Anil Kapoor posing as buyer and Praveen Chadha as witness.