SCAMSTERS INC.

Conmen are now targeting freshers by sending them job mail in the name of big companies and duping them of thousands of rupees. Two years ago, information technology giant HCL stumbled upon a mail sent in its name offering a job to the recipient. But according to HCL, it had not sent the mail, reports IBNLive.

Many more cases have come to light since then. The emails are sent in the name of big companies like HCL and many other well paid jobs. "Basically they assess the database of job sites where the e-mail IDs and profiles of people are available. Then they target mostly freshers and people with six-nine months of experience who don't know how the industry operates and big companies work. The third thing is they mostly target non-metro areas," said Ravi Shankar B, Senior VP and HR head of HCL's India operations.


Usually, these fraudulent offers are mass mailed and sometimes even marked to 500 IDs. Out of these around 10-15 of the recipients respond to the offer. Then the conmen ask these freshers for a security deposit to be transferred into a bank account, before the final interview. Once freshers send the security deposit, the conmen stop responding and then disappear completely.

Since July, companies have been putting out public warnings. Some have even registered police complaints. Online job portal, naukri.com, has also approached the Economic Offense Wing in Mumbai and warns users against such mails. "We already have a message on our homepage alerting job-seekers to not fall prey to any e-mails offering jobs and asking for a security amount to be deposited," said Vibhore Sharma, Senior VP-Technology at Infoedge.

During the investigation it was found out that each mail had a different sender name, account number and bank. The conmen even gave fake company addresses. The authorities are still looking for these conmen but when they contacted the various banks to check on the account numbers given in the e-mails many accounts were still found to be active. Few banks also gave out information about transactions.

Source: SiliconIndia.com

The Indian School of Business, backed by some of the leading global companies, has been dealt another black eye with an executive board member charged over the largest hedge fund insider-trading scheme.

Billionaire Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam and five others, were charged by U.S. investigators on Friday in an insider-trading case, generating profits of more than $20 million over several years.

Among those charged, Anil Kumar, a director at consulting firm McKinsey & Co., is on the executive board of the Indian School of Business (ISB), a premier management institute which was placed second among Asia's business schools this year.

"The incident is strange and shocking," said Rishi Sahai, managing director of Cogence Advisors, a New Delhi-based corporate advisory firm. "Greed has overpowered all the corporate and management rationalities."

Kumar, 51, a resident of Saratoga, California, is a friend of Rajaratnam's and a direct or indirect investor in certain Galleon funds.

Located in the southern Indian city and technology hub of Hyderabad, the school's governing board reads like a mini-Who's Who of global business, drawing on leaders from LVMH and Dell to Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

The school has academic alliances with the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the London Business School with an aim to bring in the best of global management practices.

The ISB, meant to rival prestigious the country's Indian Institutes of Management, boasts air-conditioned lecture theatres, a mix of four-bedroom and studio apartments, swimming pool, gymnasium, and yoga and aerobics centers.

ISB was dealt a blow in January after its dean Mendu Rammohan Rao resigned following widespread protests over his role as a board member of fraud-tainted Satyam Computer Services.

In December, Satyam made a botched attempt to buy construction firms in which management held stakes. The decision was announced after a board meeting attended by Rao, among others.

Satyam's founder Ramalinga Raju later confessed the attempt to acquire the firms was made to cover up gaps in the company's balance sheet that had been inflated for many years.

"Incidents like these make it amply clear that corporates and other institutions should go for better screening processes when selecting board members instead of just focusing on an individual's industry profile," Sahai said.

The ISB, conceived in 1995, formally started operation in 2001 as a not-for-profit organization.

The ISB ranked 15th in the Financial Times 2009 global MBA rankings, and placed second among Asia's business schools.

Kumar has sought leave from the board of the Indian School of Business "until he sorts this out," Dean Ajit Rangnekar said.

Kumar had an "enthusiastic" approach toward the school and was of "huge help," he said. "(It's) shocking. We need to wait and see," Rangnekar said. "Unfortunate things happen."

Source: Reuters

Hailakandi police have unearthed a major scam in the education department running into lakhs of rupees.

The district police zeroed in on the deputy inspector of the schools, Hailakandi, Prafulla Kumar Deb, head clerk in his office, Debabrata Choudhury, and his junior colleague Selim Uddin Barbhuyan for allegedly running a racket that siphoned off over Rs 50 lakh from the government treasury.

The amount was meant for payment of general provident fund, gratuity and pension benefits to several retired teachers.

Deb was picked up by a posse of police officers from his office on Thursday morning in Hailakandi town and later set free after a few hours of intensive interrogation in the town sadar police station.

The two other accused were remanded in police custody till tomorrow to help the CID crack down on the racket.

A senior officer of the district police said the scamsters would divert funds meant for payment of provident fund, gratuity and pension to superannuated teachers to their personal bank accounts.

Several teachers were thus deprived of their retirement benefits at the end of their long service.

The officer said Choudhury confessed to having diverted Rs 25 lakh from the amount that was to be paid for superannuation, to meet his personal expenses.

The district police also seized a car used by the head clerk in course of their investigations.

The officer said the government auditors would soon scrutinise the official papers relating to the disbursal of the huge amount of funds meant for pensioners to assess the scandal and fix the responsibility of the different scamsters involved in this funds swindle.

While investigating this scam, the authorities got whiff of yet another racket in the district school department that aimed at regularising at least 35 middle school teachers’ retention posts.

A preliminary check revealed another racket in the Hailakandi education department that managed to include 35 names in the Retention List, thereby making them temporary teachers.

But the 35 posts were originally meant for regularised teachers of middle schools.

Besides names of some officials of the education department those of some leaders of the ruling Congress and a few “touts” have surfaced as the possible kingpins in this retention scam.

Source: The Telegraph

Imagine Finnish mobile handset giant Nokia paying you millions for being a loyal customer, or Korean consumer electronics giant LG offering you truckloads of cash with an LCD television. You may also be pleasantly surprised when Orange, the international mobile phone services provider, decides to reward you Rs 22.5 crore on ‘their’ anniversary. This is no Diwali largesse, but a toll-free entry point to the new, improved Nigerian scam.

Earlier, the chicanery was by a `generous foreigner’ who left behind a fortune from his will in your unsuspecting name. Today, scamsters are masquerading as the brand you trust. If it’s not cellphone makers or service providers, then it’s from banks such as Oceanic Bank International (that’s a real Nigerian bank), claiming that you have won a fully-loaded debit card.

Even as the police are on their toes, and the occasional arrests are being made, what is alarming is the increasing number of people falling prey to such frauds.There are a lot more cases coming to light, especially in cities like Mumbai and its suburbs, say e-security experts.

In one instance, a bank manager who wishes to remain unidentified says he warned a customer against depositing Rs 15 lakh in an overseas account as “transaction fees” to claim his “reward”. But the customer’s reaction stumped him. “You are jealous of me,” the customer shot back.

Recently, the Oshiwara police in Mumbai swooped down on a scamster as he came to collect the “fees” to complete formalities from a woman residing in a posh Mumbai suburb.

Part of the reason why the number of victims falling for these tricks is increasing is the polished way in which they are being executed. Take the case of the Orange “celebration”, where the service provider is sharing its joy with Indian subscribers despite having no presence in the country since 2005. The messages that enter your mobile phone actually have a customised SMS name,

TM-OTDCUK, that is obtained after paying a fee to the telecom authorities. This customised SMS name can be obtained for as little as Rs 2,000, says an executive heading a digital marketing firm. After obtaining an SMS identity, the scamster can use mobile gateways to spam mass messages where the cost of an SMS is as little as 1 paise to 20 paise per message.

Cos not unduly worried

Perpetrators are increasingly using innovative ways to cheat people. They are using different means like mobile SMS and email to attract their targets. In most of the cases, they do thorough research on the people they intend to defraud ,” says Daniel R Pranjal , chief strategist, Strategy India, a consulting company that deals in this space.

Companies whose names are being currently used as baits in these scams aren’t unduly worried at this point of time. “Consumers are quick to figure out the genuine from the fake,” D Shivakumar, managing director of Nokia India , told ET.

He added that many customers approach the company when they get these mails or messages to find out if there is any truth in the treasure coming their way. LG told this newspaper’s correspondent to forward the mail that had come allegedly on its behalf promising a bag of goodies.

Source: The Economic Times

The death of the jailed prime accused in the multi-crore provident fund scam was shrouded in mystery today with a post-mortem unble to determine the probable cause, as his family demanded a CBI probe suspecting foul play.

43-year-old Ashuthosh Astana, the alleged brain behind the Rs 23 crore scam in which a number of judges of the higher and lower judiciary were allegedly involved, has been in jail since his arrest in January last year.

Five doctors conducted the post-mortem which was video-graphed but the cause of the death of could not be ascertained, sources said, adding his viscera samples have been sent for further examination.

The sources said only the viscera report could ascertain whether Astana died due to consumption of poisonous substances as suspected by the doctors.

Source: PIT

Two Canara Bank officers in complicity with the same number of Food Corporation of India (FCI) junior employees and a small-time hotel owner- all based in Bangalore- allegedly siphoned off Rs 1.17 crore loan amount from the Bank after supplying it with ‘95 fake salary slips’.

The CBI which investigated the case dating back to 2000-2001 has filed a charge sheet against the five accused under different sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Requesting anonymity, sources in the Bank said that internal inquiry had meted out punishment to the officials and they “have been downgraded”. When pressed further for elaboration, they claimed “it could be a case of gross lapses and inadequate verification and not of fraud.” The accused officials are still on the payrolls of the bank, sources said.

CBI officials told Deccan Herald that the main actors in “the conspiracy” include Canara Bank Branch Manager N Shivanna and another officer Shivananjaiah in Advance Department, both working in Corporate Consumer Finance Branch., Infantry Road, Bangalore.

The three other accused- a hotel owner B T Satya Narayanan and two junior officials of FCI K Vasudevan Namboodari, Assistant grade-II and N Eshwar, ancillary labour- entered into a conspiracy with Canara Bank officials in 2000-01 and allegedly submitted loan applications to the Bank in the name of FCI employees. The FCI office and the small time hotel, now closed, were located in close proximity to each other.

‘Forged’

The salary slips of 95 FCI employees submitted along with the applications to the Infantry Road located Canara Bank, were either “forged” or “inflated”, according to the CBI.

“The applications were processed by the two officers of Bank and 95 loans total amounting to Rs.117.79 lakhs (approx) were sanctioned in the name of 95 employees of M/s Food Corporation of India during 2000-02”, CBI said which filed charge sheet against the five in the Sessions court .

Interestingly, these borrowers were daily paid service labourers and not the regular employees of the FCI who were also not entitled for loan under the specific ‘Can Budget Loan Scheme’. More so, the borrowers were not on the pay rolls of FCI and the Assistant Grade-II officer not authorized to issue the salary certificates or salary mandates in the name of individual borrowers.

The FCI officer Namboodari, had issued fake salary slips “by claiming to be Asst Manager (Labour Cell), FCI, Bangalore, with the help of other conspirators,” according to the CBI.
The Canara bank officials, allegedly a part of the conspiracy, had sanctioned the loan “without causing verification in to the bonafides of the borrowers and the documents submitted by them,” causing the bank a loss of Rs.1.17crore in these transactions.

Source: Deccan Herald

In the multi-crore fertilizer smuggling racket, which was busted by Chennai Sea Port Customs in August this year, one of the accused, B
S Venkatesh of Forever Exports, Bangalore, has been detained under Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act (COFEPOSA). The non-bailable detention is for one year, which can be extended for one more year, if need be.

Based on the recommendations of Customs officials, the state government passed orders for the detention.

Out of the five export agents arrested in the case, detention orders under COFEPOSA have been issued against two more people, Mohammed Omar of Bangalore-based Kohinoor Traders and Stephen Rozario of Pondicherry-based Zandra Trading - said a senior Customs official.

Customs had blown the lid off the racket, in which some traders, middlemen and exporters were involved in smuggling of heavily subsidized fertilizers. They were involved in smuggling muriate of potash (MOP) from various parts of India to Malaysia and Vietnam by falsely declaring it as industrial salt. While 52 containers of MOP were seized from six container freight stations in Chennai and one at Thoothukudi, customs commissioner C Rajan also called back 49 containers which had already left Chennai port for Malaysia. In all, 2617 metric tonnes of MOP were seized in the operation.

Source: TOI