Ex-IIT professor held for fake tele marketing

New Delhi, Oct 22: A 45-year-old retired IIT Professor and three educated youngsters were arrested for duping people by opening up several fake finance firms, travel and film production companies and fake websites using their IT skills. Deepak Kumar Rajput, a retired IIT teacher along with the youngsters trapped thousands of unsuspecting people including film personalities who unknowingly made the conmen rich by Rs 60 crore. Cheques and an unverified amount of money was recovered by the police.

According to the SSP (Ghaziabad) Raghuvir Lal, the accused were active in nine cities of India which include Ghaziabad, Noida, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. The police have arrested Manish Rajput, a resident of Vaishali, Mahendra Singh, a resident of Jaagriti Vihar and Arjun Singh, a resident of Vivek Vihar in east Delhi and Deepak Kumar Rajput, mastermind behind the fraud. However, Narender Paul, a resident of Indirapuram and four Noida girls, who worked as tele-callers are still absconding.

The frauds had implemented a three-pronged strategy to dupe people, first they asked the victims to pay Rs 1,000 to register with their tele-marketing website. After that, they were asked to pay another Rs 10,000 to get the login and marketing kit. Good work was appreciated and rewards were given out in the form of gold coins, medallions and even cars to the deserving agents. But when several others joined up to the website in about two months, the accused shut down the website and vanished away.

After that the accused opened up travel websites offering foreign trips at cheap prices. Initially, clients would be given discounts on smaller trips to Southeast Asia, encourge them to pay willingly for trips to the US and Europe. Once they had enough money, the accused would shut the website down.

According to police, the conmen also duped two Chennai-based directors of Rs 1.75 crore after offering them a break in a Hindi movie. A mahurat was also held, which was attended by a Bollywood actor.

OneIndia News