Four foreign nationals have been arrested from Pune.
Four foreign nationals have been arrested from Pune for allegedly cheating several people of lakhs with the promise of jobs abroad, police said on Thursday.
A team of the Cyber police from the Mumbai crime branch raided a flat in Undri area of Pune and arrested the four accused on Wednesday, an official said.
The arrested accused include Nigerian and West African nationals who allegedly got in touch with at least 2,000 job seekers of various countries and cheated them, the official said.
As many as 14 mobile phones, four laptops, three memory cards, five routers, a data card, two international SIM cards were recovered from the premises, he said.
During the investigation, the police found that the accused had transferred at least Rs 10 crore to a Nigerian bank, he said.
The accused had collected this amount from job seekers in the form of visa fees, programme fees, employment authorisation and travel allowance, the official said.
The racket came to light on January 15, when Chembur resident Vishal Mandavkar approached the Cyber police with the complaint of online fraud, he said.
According to the police, Vishal Mandavkar had responded to an advertisement about a job at a prominent hotel in Canada and mailed his resume, following which he was asked to deposit Rs 17.22 lakh as visa fee, programme fee, employment authorisation and travel allowance.
Once the amount was paid, the contact person stopped responding to the complainant's calls, it was stated.
The probe has revealed that the accused had used 64 bank accounts of 12 Indian banks across the country to collect money from job seekers, he said.
The police have recovered at least 2,500 people's passport data and other personal details from the accused persons, the official added.