Chennai: A 23-year-old diploma holder from Thanjavur lost over Rs 8 lakh — all he managed to save while working in an African country for two years — after an international job racket gang lured him with an offer of Canadian dollar $ 1.44 lakh per year (Rs 72 lakh).
The global phishing gang made calls from Canada besides claiming to be talking from Canadian visa processing centre in Delhi and VFS Global. K. Raja Kumar has approached police in Thanjavur detailing his ordeal and how all his savings vanished in eight instalments between February 1 and 25. “We are looking into the compliant and will take appropriate action,” said N.M. Mayilvahanan, superintendent of police, Thanjavur.
The gang seems to have picked up his details from a job portal and started calling him. They had used the name of well-known oil and gas agency company in Canada to lure Raja Kumar to send him a call letter on his e-mail. “Then they had conducted an e-mail interview. After nearly one week silence, they sent me an offer cum appointment letter and also asked me to send them passport details.
They said they would take care of all my expenses except visa-processing fee. I was asked to pay the visa fee, which they said was refundable. Once I started paying online they kept on asking me charges under various heads. And I ended up paying nearly Rs 8.5 lakh. I received calls from Canada. Got calls from people posing as employees of Canadian embassy in Chennai and also from people claiming to be employed in VFS Global office in Delhi, which handles visa papers for different countries across the world,” Raja Kumar said.
Only after he went and enquired with Chennai office of VFS Global last Friday he realised that he was a victim of phishing. The person named Lalu R. Dora, who claimed to represent the Canadian visa application centre in all communications, when confronted teased Raja Kumar and asked him to go to CBI and get his money back.
