Agents booked for taking Indian job-seekers to Laos to work in fake call centres
Mumbai crime branch registers FIR against job agents duping youths with fake jobs in Thailand, forcing them to work in Laos in fraudulent schemes.
MUMBAI: The crime branch has registered an FIR against job placement agents for running a racket which duped unemployed youths by promising them well-paid jobs in Thailand. The scamsters sent the job seekers to an isolated location in neighbouring Laos instead, where the victims would be forced to work on fraudulent jobs, tortured, harassed and threatened.
The police said the fraud was being run by Indian and Chinese nationals who took the victims from India to Bangkok and from there they were taken to Laos by a boat where they were made to work in fake call centres and asked to prepare fake social media accounts in order to cheat American and British nationals by luring them to invest in fraud Bitcoins schemes.
The crime branch has registered an FIR based on the complaint filed by one of the victims, identified as Siddharth Yadav, 23, a resident of Wagle Estate in Thane. Yadav escaped the fraud along with three other men and said there ar 30 Indian nationals still trapped in Laos. The police said Yadav was searching for a job and he got in touch with an agent named Rohit who told him that a recruiter called Jerry Jacob was looking for job-seekers for a call centre job in Thailand where the job responsibility would be to sell crypto-currency and Bitcoins.
“He was promised a salary of ₹65,000 per month in Indian rupees for which he agreed along with the terms and conditions of the job. His departure was dated December 30, 2022, Yadav even paid the agents ₹50,000 to get the job. He booked two flight tickets, one from Mumbai to Bangkok and the other from Bangkok to Chiang Rai, a city near the borders of Laos and Myanmar,” said an officer.
In Chiang Rai, a Chinese national picked him up to drop him at the Laos border where at immigration, another Chinese national collected the passports of several Indian job-seekers after which they were taken on a boat to Laos. “Yadav learnt that, like him, there were several Indians from Punjab and Delhi who were taken to the Golden Triangle, a mountainous region in northeastern Myanmar, northwestern Thailand, and northern Laos. This is where they met two men, identified as Godfrey and Sunny, both Indians settled in Laos who gave them computers, and iPhones and asked them to create fake social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. They were asked to make accounts in the names of female US, Canadian and European citizens. Their modus operandi was to chat with the nationals befriend them and then ask them to invest in cryptocurrency by downloading their company’s application on the phone. The fraud application showed double money in the inverter’s account, but they couldn’t withdraw the money,” said the police officer.
Yadav didn’t get any salary as the company’s rules were very strict. If they went for lunch for more time, spoke with someone else or stood up while working they were fined.
“Yadav’s conscience didn’t allow them to cheat people. He asked the men, running the racket, to return his passport so he could go back to India. But they told him that he would have to pay a hefty fine to get his passport back. Finally, he along with others wrote to the Indian Embassy. The frauds found out about this assaulted the victims and asked them to take back their complaints. Finally, the local police helped the victims after the embassy intervened and deported four of them to India,” said an officer.
The police officer said there were around 30 such people trapped. They were kept in harsh conditions, tortured and asked to pay fines for leaving the job.
“The victims were also threatened that if they complained against the job racket in India, their families would face dire consequences. We have registered a case against three people, Jerry Jacob, Godfrey and Sunny,” said the police officer.
The police officers said the case is being transferred to the Mumbai Crime branch and is registered under 120 B criminal conspiracy, 520 cheating, 506 criminal intimidation, 323 punishment for voluntarily causing hurt, 342 wrongful confinement, 346 wrongful confinement in secret, 370 trafficking of persons, 386 extortion of person by putting him under threat of death or hurt of the IPC and under Emigration Act, 1983.
