Africans running job racket held, data of 27,000 people recovered

The Cyber wing of the city crime branch has arrested four Africans for allegedly running an interstate job racket.

The police have also recovered data of over 27,000 job aspirants from them and suspect that the gang has duped thousands of job seekers in last couple of years. The four who were arrested on Wednesday are identified as Michael Olayeni (32), Sotomiwa Thompson (25) and Opeyemi Ohunmoroti (26) who are Nigerian nationals while Augustin Williams (22) is from Sierra Leone, said police.

In August, the gang members posing as officials of Hilton hotel in Canada approached a Chembur resident who was looking for job in hotel industry. The victim Vishal Mandavkar, 30, had uploaded his profile on various job portals.

The gang offered him a job of manager at the hotel and also sent him an appointment letter following an interview.

The fraudsters then gave him a number of a fake 'diplomat' Mark Brown and asked Mandavkar to contact him for visa formalities. According to the police, Brown made him to pay Rs 17.22 lakh for various reasons including visa fees, programme fees, employment authorization and so on. Lastly, he demanded money on the pretext of some RBI report, it is when Mandavkar got suspicious and contacted his friend who is in RBI. His friend told him that this was a fraud and asked him to approach police.

During the investigation police traced the accused and arrested them from Undri in Pune. From them, police have seized 14 mobile phones, four laptops and a couple of memory cards, computers, pen drives and four sim cards.