IT job scam in Hyderabad: How Cyberabad frauds are cheating job seekers

Job fraud cases continue to plague Hyderabad with 72 cases recorded under Cyberabad commissionerate in the past one year alone. Cyberabad recorded the highest number of cases in 2017, Hyderabad commissionerate recorded 52, followed by Rachakonda with 38 cases of job frauds. 

Why Cyberabad?

When the tech boom began in Hyderabad from 1998, most of the real estate, educational institutions, IT companies and financial firms made Madhapur, Miyapur, Hitech City, Kondapur, Gachibowli, Raidurgam, Manikonda Village district as their home.

As Hyderabad continued to receive a large volume of floating immigrants from across the country, the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation divided the city for administrative purposes. The areas mentioned above were classified under a single police precinct called Cyberabad Metropolitan Police. Over the years all of this contributed to the name Cyberabad. 

The numbers: Nearly 15% of the victims have been identified as IT professionals. However, "majority of the victims still remain students or unemployed youths," said Sathish Kumar, assistant commissioner of police (Cyber crime), Cyberabad as reported in TOI.

An analysis published by Hindustan Times revealed that between September 2016 and September 2017, 140 job scams were reported from 35 cities across India. Together, over 30,000 people were scammed though only half these reports mentioned the number of people duped.

Modus operandi: Scamsters in Cyberabad take details of victims from job search portals to offer lucrative opportunities via call or email, according to Cyber crime police as reported in TOI. Police also observed that initially offenders would offer job opportunities via consultancy firms and lure victims by offering backdoor entry for sveral job seekers.

According to the ACP (cyber crime), offenders now access details and resume of victims from job seeking portals like monster.com, naukri.com etc by giving some percentage of commission to these websites and target victims accordingly.

"Initially the accused would offer job opportunity to the victim stating that they got their details from websites, later they would ask for money sighting different charges," said the ACP. 

Police also observed that most of the accused operate from Delhi and Bangalore. 

Digital frauds: Making use of the digital space, the online scamsters come up with new ways to con the public, said a senior police official of the Hyderabad cyber cell. The digital menace is spearheaded mainly by youngsters, mostly in their early 20s, with the motive to make quick bucks. In fact, most of them are educated. The scamsters create a fake website and a bogus firm and lure fresh graduates with fake job offers, the police said.

In July 2017, the Gopalapuram police, commercial locality in Chennai also busted a fake job racket and arrested an MBA graduate, M Babu Rao, an HR professional with Sunshine Technology in Telangana. “He updated his details on Just Dial and cheated unemployed youths by promising them jobs in government and private sectors,” said Ch. Sridhar, Gopalapuram police inspector as reported in Deccan Chronicle.

The issue of visa frauds: "Visa frauds are also connected with job frauds.The accused lure victims by assuring them work permits abroad like-Canada and Australia," said the ACP.

Moreover, 70% of the accused in such visa frauds, were identified as Nigerians, TOI reported. "The offenders asked to deposit huge amount of money towards visa process, work permit card, personal travel allowance, Labour Market Impact Assessment and other charges," he added.

Hyderabad has been developed parallelly along with the IT and pharma boom, which makes the techies gullible to its appeal.