Former IT staffer exploits tech, dupes jobseekers

Adyar police cyber cell, who arrested accused Prabu (31) of Kolathur and his accomplices, Solomon (29) of Ambattur and Yuvaraj (30) of Ayanavaram, also seized two laptops, four debit cards, a car, two bikes and a few documents from them. Police are also looking into the wealth Prabu reportedly amassed in the last three years by cheating others.

The trio was arrested based on a complaint by Amarnath of Kottivakkam. Amarnath, a BE graduate, lost his job during the lockdown and had shared his profile on job portals. He received a phone call in 

September and the person who spoke to him identified himself as the human resource (HR) manager of a reputed IT firm. Amarnath was told that he has been shortlisted for the job provided he could pay Rs 

20,500 as processing fee. Amarnath, given the circumstances, could not doubt the caller or say no to the offer since he also received the offer letter from the IT firm’s mail ID.

He sent the money via GPay, but to his shock, got another mail saying his offer letter has been cancelled. Since the HR manager’s phone remained unreachable, Amarnath realised that he has been cheated and approached the cyber cell of Adyar district police.

A special team was formed and to their luck, the phone used by the fraudster was switched on once and was traced to Kolathur. The team camped in Kolathur for two days and secured the main accused Prabu.

Investigation revealed that Prabu used to work in an IT firm in MEPZ, Chromepet, for a monthly salary of Rs 25,000 in 2015, and was already arrested for cheating job aspirants by issuing fake offer letters. However, the arrest did not deter Prabu but made him look for ways to not come into the radar of police again. He met Solomon, who had been arrested for pickpocketing, in the prison and together discussed ways on a foolproof plan.

After released on bail, Prabu registered a financing firm which he used as a call centre to make defrauding calls to jobseekers. He registered as consultancy services on job portals and bought profiles of jobseekers in the software domain.

Solomon’s job was to visit Tasmac bars and convince migrant labourers to surrender their passbook and debit card of inactive bank account for Rs 5,000. Their other accomplice Yuvaraj shopped for Aadhaar cards of migrant labourers to purchase SIM cards in their names.

Prabu would make calls to job-seekers using these SIM cards promising jobs. To convince them, he altered his own offer letter on photoshop and send it to his targets from a spoof website as if the mail was sent from the HR manager of the reputed IT firms. He would later share the bank account details of the migrant labourers with victims and ask them to deposit money.

“Prabu had a target of cheating about 300 people in six months and called them ‘projects’. He would discard the SIM cards, phones as well as the bank accounts after every project not to be sniffed by police,” said an official.

Though the exact number of victims is not known, police suspect it would run into thousands as per his own claims. Police also said he has paid income tax for the fraudulent money showing it as income from his financing firm.