Fraudsters who stole Rs.55 lakh from 37 people in name of IBM arrested

11 February, 2012

IBM is considered a blue-chip company and those who want to make a career in fields in which IBM operates would give their right arm to get a job in the company. It's this hunger that fraudsters took advantage of and conned around 37 people out of their money in false job offerings with IBM.

LAST YEAR one of my friends was about to finish her MBA degree from a reputed college and was waiting for her placement offers to come by when she got a mail stating that IBM had shortlisted her Curriculum Vitae and wanted her to join the company as they were carrying out mass hiring. She was not the only one to get the mail from her college as many of her friends got the same mail with the same offer.

However, she somehow smelt a rat in the whole matter as IBM was due to come in their college and make selections. Even after she was placed, she used to get such mails offering jobs in prestigious companies but in return they used to ask for deposits as much as 50,000 to 1.5 lakhs of rupees. Police in Visakhapatnam caught hold of two such fraudsters named K. Srilakshmi, 34, and G. Anand, 37 who used to scam students in this manner. They had conned 37 people amassing around Rs 55 lakh between June and September 2011, reported IBNLive.

It almost seems like an Ocean Trilogy, except no one was as smart or lucky as Ocean’s team or else they would not have been caught. While their accomplices named R. Nagasrinivas, Ch. Kiran, Rishi Reddy and Praveen, are absconding, these two people are the only one who were nabbed. K. Srilakshmi, who has a MBA degree, would call up aspirants and would say that IBM is offering them a job.

After getting people who would be interested for the lucrative offer, they would create a new email id of the job seekers in the latter's names and mail the details to them. In a few days the seeker would receive an email from the IBM Group. The aspirants would be asked to pay a processing fee, which would be around 1.5 lakh and some of the victims were even called to Pune and taken to a building with an IBM logo outside.

In this way the kingpin would work with a number of people with good qualifications. Though the kingpin has been caught it is necessary that remaining members of the gang are apprehended and put behind bars to give a strong message to potential fraudsters.