MUMBAI: Andheri police busted a racket in which eight persons would allegedly set up a travel agency in a city, promise people jobs abroad, collect money from aspirants, shut office and then move to another city for the same.
Out of eight four accused, including an engineer, were arrested on Sunday as they were about to open a news office in Mindspace, Malad. An engineering diploma holder and his three associates were arrested for running an inter-state employment racket and duping nearly a thousand of people from across the country. The gang had set up employment agency offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Navi Mumbai, and knocked out money from job aspirants, before shutting shop.
Inspector Rajesh Padvi of Andheri police station received a tip off that one of the accused whom the Andheri police had been looking for since 2014 for duping over 180 job aspirants of ₹ 1.16 crore was about to open another travel agency in Malad. “We laid a trap and arrested four accused. It is the first time that they have been arrested. The four accused have cases registered against them in Kandivali, Andheri, Vashi, Delhi and UP,” Padvi said.
“They normally return to a city only after a year. In 2015, they set up another office at Kandivali and duped people of around ₹1.5 crore. Then they moved to Vashi and UP and in 2017, they duped youngsters in Delhi,” the officer said. The accused were planning to open another office in Malad when the police received a tip off and arrested them. An officer said: “We prevented another major fraud as they would have gone about duping people in the same way.” Another officer said they are looking for four more accused, including one Rajeev Verma who, the police believe, is a mastermind of the racket that has been operational since 2013.
The accused—Amit Patole (39), Amardeep Chauhan (28) and Sarfaraz Mohammad Shaikh (43) and Abdul Salaam Ansari (29)—indulged most of the money on overseas holidays and invested some in gold and property. Mumbai Police have booked them under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 419 — cheating by personation — and 420 — cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property. According to police the Patole, Sheikh and Ansari are from Uttar Pradesh, while Chauhan is a resident of Delhi. The police said that there could be more arrests. Each member of the gang was assigned a specific task, said the police. Patole was reportedly tasked with renting office spaces and handling the administration; Chauhan, an engineering graduate, was the smooth-talker as he spoke fluent English and lured clients; Ansari handled visa applications and collection of passports while Shaikh was in-charge of convincing clients who sensed something amiss. The group of four hails from north India and was living in upscale rented apartments. They are all married and would claim to be estate agents.
“In 2014, around 180 people were conned by the accused in Andheri (E). The gang had placed advertisements in newspapers and claimed to offer jobs in abroad. They received several applications from across the country. They collected the aspirants’ passports and conned them of ₹1.16 crore collectively,” said DCP Navinchandra Reddy. Some of the victims were given back their passports with tourist visas stamped. “These aspirants went abroad only to be deported after the visas expired. Others were given fake visas. In 2015, the gang moved their base to Kandivali (W), where they conned another 500 job aspirants,” he added.
In 2017, the gang moved base to New Delhi, where again they duped 464 job aspirants of ₹1.50 crore collectively. The Pitampura police in New Delhi lodged a case against them. Offences were also lodged at Devariya in Uttar Pradesh, where 150 job aspirants were cheated and at Vashi in Navi Mumbai. When the Andheri police nabbed the accused, they were in the process of setting up new offices in Malad (W) and Goregaon (W) under the name ‘Orbis International’. “Every office was set up under a new name; the Andheri (E) ones was called Delta,” said senior inspector Pandit Thorat.
“Most of the victims were from small towns and they trusted the accused,” added Thorat. There was no fixed amount that they sought from the victims. They would ask for anywhere between ₹ 40,000 and ₹ 1 lakh, said the police, adding that payments were accepted in cheque as well as cash. The cheques were deposited in the bank account of a fifth gang member, who is still at large. “Based on a tip-off, we arrested the four accused on September 10 and seized 10 computers, cash and gold. They will be produced before a court,” said investigating officer Nagnath Bansode. A source said that Patole was the mastermind of the racket.
