Hyderabad: The chief executive officer of an Indian IT company, Ajay Kolla, and 13 of his staff, who duped job seekers from four continents were arrested by the Cyberabad cyber crime police on Friday. It is estimated that they cheated one lakh job seekers of about Rs 70 crore.
The surprising fact is that except one victim, none of the others have complained. The police say that the amount collected from many victims was Rs 7,000 on an average and in only a few instances the victims deposited over Rs 20,000.
Cyberabad police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar said that the accused Ajay Kolla, an engineering graduate, started Wisdom IT Services India Pvt Ltd in Madhapur in 2009, and shifted the company to Cyber Towers. He worked abroad for a few years before starting the company.
The company offers job assistance in alliance with hundreds of multi-national companies and claims to provide services like resume writing. The company has two websites — www.Wisdomjobsindia.com and www.Wisdomjobsgulf.com which advertised job opportunities in India and abroad, and also posted that the company has signed an MoU with several multinational companies.
“As registration on the websites is free, about 2.5 crore people from India and 27.5 lakh people from various countries like South Africa, Qatar, Lebanon, Jordan, Netherlands, UK, Sri Lanka, Australia and Malaysia registered,” said the police commissioner.
He said tele-callers hired by the company called the candidates and conducted interviews after collecting money in US dollars only to tell that they were not selected for the job.
Subsequently, Ajay Kolla, the prime accused, along with his team of Syed Mazhar, Rohit, Baswaraj Nayakodi, Gopinath Sureddy, Rajesh, Shubham Kumar Singh, Samrat Pandugula, Nikhita Jain, Madhuri Veepuri, Karthik Kumar Yelibandi, Shamikant Kankamneni, Ravi Kiran and Srikanth Gatoju, were arrested by the cyber crime police and incriminating material including fake job offer letters were taken from the company's office.
The police also froze two bank accounts belonging to the accused which contained Rs 23 lakh. Further investigation is on to see who else is involved in the fraud and trace the disbursement of the money collected from the victims of the fraud.
Responding to a query, the commissioner said, "The company is being run since 2009, but no one has complained to date, as the amounts deposited were less, and they assumed the reasons for rejection were genuine. The total number of victims of the company is yet to be ascertained and we appeal to the public to lodge a complaint if they were victims of the company."
