Three held for deceiving job seekers with false ad

Detectives yesterday claimed to have arrested three members of a fraud gang on charge of cheating job-seekers by publishing fake job advertisements for over 8,000 posts in two name-only organisations.

A team of Detective Branch (DB, Mirpur division) arrested them from different areas in Dhaka along with Tk 19 lakh amassed from the job seekers, said Muhammad Harun Or Rashid, chief of DB of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) yesterday.

The arrestees are Azizul Hasan alias Emran (51), Beauty Akter (35) and Kabir Uddin Pias (30).

"They are members of an organised fraud gang," the DB chief told reporters at a press briefing at DMP media centre in the afternoon.

The DB official said the gang circulated a job advertisement on June 15 for 6,472 posts in a so-called private intelligence agency called the "Fairfax Bangladesh Project", claiming it was funded by an US-based agency.

The advertisement also mentioned it was approved by the Bangladesh government, he added.

Besides, this gang published another advertisement on June 17 for 1,944 posts in a so-called organisation named "Bangladesh Protibondhi Kollan Trust". They used a fake registration number of the organisation to convince job seekers.

Harun said the gang opened an account with Sonali Bank's Begum Rokeya Sarani branch and asked the interested applicants to deposit Tk 150 to 500, depending on the posts, to the bank account through pay order.

The DB team based on Beauty's information arrested the others as they were planning to get away after withdrawing parts of the deposited money, said DB officials.