The Police on Saturday arrested five persons from Delhi for allegedly operating a "bogus" call centre and duping a Mumbai-based job aspirant of over Rs 3 lakh.
Police suspect that more such cases may come to fore during investigation of the five men who were brought to Mumbai on a transit remand yesterday.
Police have summoned eight women employees of the call centre to Mumbai for questionning, a senior officer said today.
The matter came to light a few days ago when one Dhawal Patel approached the Vile Parle Police here and filed a complaint stating that he was duped of over Rs 3 lakh by a tele-caller under the pretext of providing him a job in Jet Airways, he said.
Patel currently works as a ground staff at the international airport here.
"Patel told the police that he received a call from a job placement agency assuring him a job in the private carrier. The caller informed Patel that he got his number from a job portal," said ACP (Vakola division) Prakash Ghavane.
He said the caller asked Patel to pay the "registration fee" of Rs 19,000 for processing his case.
"After Patel paid the amount, the accused further asked him to pay various charges such as documentation fee, verification fee, medical examination charges etc. Over a period of three months, Patel paid them over Rs three lakh," the officer said.
Based on the statement of Patel, the police registered a case under sections 420 (cheating and dishonesty) and 406 (criminal breach of trust) of the IPC as well as under relevant sections of IT Act, he said.
"During investigation, police found the accused deposited Patel's money in a Delhi-based branch of a nationalised bank and withdrew them from an ATM there," the ACP said.
Subsequently, a team of the Mumbai Police was sent to Delhi, which examined the CCTV footage of the ATM and traced the accused to a call centre located in the area.
"During the investigation, it came to light the call centre was bogus and was being operated for duping job aspirants by making offers of lucrative jobs to them," another officer said, adding that the kingpin of the fraud is still at large.
All the five accused were produced before a court here today which remanded them in police custody till August 19, he said.
They are identified as Pankaj Handa (27), Sanjeev Garg (22), Abhishek Singh (21), Ajay Prasad (22) and Suman Singh (27).
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