Pan-India jobs racket busted in Odisha, 3 held

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha govt claimed to have busted a pan-India jobs racket on Wednesday, and arrested three people for their alleged involvement in it, officials said.

Members of the gang operating the “racket“ were active in several states, including Odisha, Jammu & Kashmir, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, they said.

However, it was being run mainly from Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, the officials said.

Two of those arrested hail from Hyderabad, while the other belongs to Odisha, the EOW said in a statement.

“These accused were camping in Odisha since last few months and had been living in a rented accommodation,” it said.

Many “incriminating” documents and items like laptops, mobile phones and ATM cards, besides Rs 1 lakh cash have been seized during a search operation, the EOW said.

The case is based on a suo motu inquiry conducted by the EOW in connection with advertisements published in a local daily, the statement said.

The gang members duped people by putting up advertisements, seeking applications for non-teaching posts in some schools in Odisha, the officials said.

“So far, we have mainly inquired the Odisha aspect of this scam. We will be alerting the police/law enforcement agencies of other states concerned,” an EOW official said. “The advertisements were carefully designed so as to resemble similar government notifications for misleading and duping the unemployed youth,” he said.

The accused were also planning to introduce steep charges in the form of interview, security and verification fees in the coming days, he said.

“It was found that the scammers used various mule bank accounts to collect the fees so that they could fool the police and law enforcement agencies. The members of this gang were also using fake SIM cards,” the official said. Transactions of more than Rs 1.7 crore have so far been detected in these bank accounts, he added.