Dairy major Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), popularly known as Amul, has lodged a police complaint that several people have fallen prey to fradulent advertisements on Google search platform offering Amul distributorship.
It has also issued a legal notice to Google India seeking to stop such advertisements.
In a release Wednesday, the GCMMF said the notice was issued on January 10 as these paid advertisements are "being misused to scam innocent individuals in the name of Amul".
According to Amul, some individuals or organisations are running paid advertisements on Google platform using keywords such as 'Amul Franchisee', 'Amul Parlor' and 'Amul Distributor'.
Whenever a person clicks on these bogus links, he or she is asked to fill a form. The person then receives a call, seeking "registration fee" ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 5 lakh, but once the money is paid, the advertiser stops communicating, it said.
GCMMF Managing director R S Sodhi said several such victims had approached it. "Some of the victims claimed to have paid Rs 3 to 6 lakh. They were under the impression that they were dealing with Amul," he said.
"Apart from serving a legal notice to Google India, we have also filed a complaint with police. We also requested Google to crosscheck the background of the advertisers before accepting paid ads related to large companies like Amul," he said.
Google India spokesperson was not immediately available for comments.
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