22-yr-old siphons ₹60 L through fake online job racket

MUMBAI: A 22-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly defrauding ₹60 lakh in the last two years through an online fake job racket. The accused, who was unemployed in 2020, has since bought a new house, a car and land, said police officials.

The accused, Sahil Khan, is a resident of the Hanuman Society in Deonar. In 2020, when people started losing their jobs due to the Covid pandemic, Khan posted an advertisement on the OLX website, offering well-paying freelance jobs.

“Khan started getting responses from those in need and would contact them on the phone. He would first take small amounts from them in the name of ‘processing fees’ and then give them assignments,” said police inspector Raju Surve, Mankhurd police station.

He said that when the victims submitted the assignments, Khan would point out several supposed mistakes in their work and claim that the ‘client’ had suffered losses due to the mistakes. He would then force the job-seekers to pay money as ‘fines’ for the losses incurred by the non-existent clients.

In order to keep the racket working, Khan needed a steady supply of SIM cards, as he never used the same SIM card more than a few times. For this reason, he would request his friends and family members to get SIM cards in their names for him.

The racket came to light earlier this year, when Khan’s relative, Ali Shamsul Kamar, started receiving calls from various people, telling him that they had been cheated out of various amounts and that the SIM cards used in the fraud were all registered in his name.

“Over the last two years, Kamar had provided a total of five SIM cards to Khan using his own Aadhar card. Khan kept telling him that he needed SIM cards for business purposes and that he did not have an Aadhar card, and as Kamar thought Khan was facing hard times, he kept obliging Khan,” said a police officer.

Besides, Khan would pay Kamar ₹1,000 to ₹2,000 for every SIM card, he added.

When the calls did not stop, Kamar made inquiries and found that his wife had also given Khan seven SIM cards, while his friend, Badruddin Sayyed, had similarly provided four SIM cards to Khan.

An intrigued Kamar asked around some more and found out that Khan, who used to lament about having no job and no money till two years ago, now owned a new house in Deonar, a new car and a plot of land in his native Uttar Pradesh. Convinced that something was wrong, Kamar then approached the Mankhurd police and lodged a complaint.

“We apprehended Khan from his residence and the details of his racket were revealed in his questioning, after which he was placed under arrest. We have seized 11 SIM cards from his possession and are still trying to get an estimate of how many more cards he has used and discarded to date,” said Surve.

HT PHOTO The accused, Sahil Khan is a resident in Deonar.