Date of Publishing:23/11/2010

Location:Hyderabad

Fraudulent offer letters that promise fat pay cheques and incredible perks are often traps that leave job hunters poorer by a couple of thousands.

Hope is an Achilles heel." This has never been truer for job aspi rants trying to remain optimistic as they upload their resumes on job portals, hoping against hope to stand out amongst the crowd. Within days, some were pleasantly surprised to receive a flurry of offer letters -often from wellknown organisations like Videocon, the British Council, Warner Bros. and even the United Nations. Authentic looking, authoritative, these letters are `happy to inform' the candidate has been short-listed and the interview date fixed. There's only one minor to-do -the hopeful is directed to transfer a few thousand rupees into the company's account towards `couriering air tickets and other expenses'. They are reassured that this amount is fully refundable.

While some are desperate or naive enough to bite, most do the sensible thing and call the company to confirm. None however have any faith in the cybercrime bureau and apparently, with good reason. Praveen Benjamin received a job offer via email from Videocon, with a remuneration of Rs 35,000 per month (HRA + D.A + conveyance and other company's benefits) extra. He was about to respond to confirm when he read the last line of the email. He was required to deposit Rs 10,700 (refundable after he joined the company) to help them courier his offer letter and air tickets to his home address. Suspicious, Benjamin went online and found that scamsters were unscrupulously using big company names to dupe people.

Prashanthi Kumar received a tempting offer from one of the UK's reputed star hotels, says, "I recently got an offer from Millennium. It looked genuine and I was very close to sending the Rs 15,000 they had asked for but family members suggested I recheck the procedure. I found out that there were many mails like these asking people for money."

Student Arvind Tony recently uploaded his resume on a job search engine, "I got a reply from Tata Limited and Videocon asking me to submit Rs 8,000 following which they would send an appointment letter to my address. I realised it was fraud." Concerned, Ajay Merchant, manager, British Library, reminds that it's quite simple to spot a fake letter. "If someone is asking for money or personal information that itself says it is a scam. No company mails come from a personal email ID and it is impossible to get an offer from a place you never applied to, unless you are a very big personali ty."

Officials know that this latest con is strategically devised to hit youngsters for a job. Still, the desperate for a job. Still, the police seem reluctant to start investigations on their own steam despite being intimated about the problem. Playing blind to the fact that individual citizens are wary of filing com plaints for fear of being victim ized later, Uma Maheswar Rao, Inspector, Cybercrime casually passes the buck back to the pub lic, "We got a mail from an indi vidual informing us about this fraud. I've asked them to come and file a complaint because we cannot do anything till someone complains."

Web Resource for Reference of the Above Mentioned Article:

• DECCAN CHRONICLE