This article is written by Harshita Shah, pursuing a Diploma in Cyber Law, Fintech Regulations and Technology Contracts from Lawsikho.

Introduction 

Amid lay-offs and job cuts after the nation-wide lockdown since March 2020, many people have not been called back to their respective workplaces; most of the working class has experienced salary cut, students who were offered placements haven’t received their offer letters from companies, the labor class has migrated back to their home-town with no signs of returning back and there is no work available under MNREGA. A global employment crisis is already looming over and people are aware about the efforts they need to put in to secure a job back. Students who have graduated and wish to apply for foreign universities are now searching for remote work from home to not waste the year and rather to add practical training experience in their CVs. This has been a boon to fraudsters to take advantage of people’s anxiety and worry regarding the grim future of job prospects to lure them into false high pay promising jobs. Often in a state of anxiety and believing it to be a fate or destiny calling, people end up subscribing at multiple platforms to get their CVs or resumes recognized. However, it is a sad fact that your CVs or resumes are not protected the way your bank account number, CVV, ATM PIN is protected. Despite having personal information and in some cases sensitive personal information on the CVs it is vulnerable to extraction of information and profiling. In this article, I will take you to the most common ways the fraudsters use to commit online recruitment frauds, how you can protect yourself from such frauds, and in case you are a victim to such frauds, what legal remedies can you pursue to recover your money and claim damages. 

Types of online recruitment fraud

• Email scam– Have you used LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or monster?  Then you sure would know their relevance to find job opportunities, and to locate job openings available in your domain. Amidst the pandemic, LinkedIn has also come up with catchy profile slogans such as Open to Work. It is important to know how relevant job openings get posted on these platforms. Recruiters now-a-days use Automated systems software that would create the catchy advertisement to scaffold job advertisements and publish them. Potential employees or candidates submit or upload their resumes for the opening they want to apply for. 

For e.g. LinkedIn keeps posting job openings and Internship openings where candidates can directly apply through LinkedIn ‘IN EASY APPLY’ and can upload their resumes therein. By introducing malwares or by launching man in the middle of attack, fraudsters can divert your resumes to them and can misuse your resumes to filter out your personal details along-with educational qualifications and workplace data. Thereupon, the fraudster will send you an email congratulating you for being selected for the position. Often some people know that it is too good to be true. However, they would neglect this thought and rather take a broad minded approach since they wouldn’t want to miss out on the opportunity at a sheer thought of suspicion. These fraud recruiters would then ask to pay for the background check, or ask you to directly deposit a certain sum for receiving training materials, so on and forth. 

• Phishing– Phishing is the most commonly employed recourse to steal your sensitive personal data. Amidst the lockdown, banks have now started making advertisements to educate the consumer to not share any of the details of the bank account such as bank account number, password, OTP, PIN with any one over the phone or any other media, who pretends to be a representative of the bank, but is not. Phishing is basically where the attacker masks himself into the face of your trusted source and lures you to reveal certain information. 
• Fake Job advertisements– Lockdown is the best scenario for work-from-home. Fresher’s who have graduated and got a placement through recruitment drive on campus, haven`t got an official call letter from the company. Hence, many of them are struggling to find a job for themselves amidst uncertainty. Hence, students, fresher’s, people who have lost jobs or are temporarily not given work end up signing and subscribing at various job listings. Many times these job listings just pop up as an advertisement and often people willingly share their email id and previous organization details. This is the same for freelancing jobs. However, due to our limited knowledge of automated systems responsible for recruitment, we expect a response to our resumes and CVs sent for application. It is possible to corrupt this system and direct your resumes or CVs somewhere else to extract your sensitive personal data and personal data such as Address, Phone number, qualification details, blood group(in certain cases), Institute and organization details which fraudsters can easily filter out to target you.
• Advance fees scams– If you have received an email congratulating you for being shortlisted for interview, or for being selected for job as trainee, or for a trial period and the email asks you to credit certain amount on a given account number for background check or certain administrative charges or in case of a abroad job, it asks you to pay certain fees for visa purposes and travel agent, then hold on. First verify the email address of the sender. Genuine offers wouldn’t be as straightforward as congratulating you for being selected for the position. It would include details of departments, Head of department and would always ask you for a further round of interview. Also, rarely any company would describe its pay package on the mail or confirm a fresher for a job with a too good salary. 

No interviews would be scheduled only over phone calls. If the recruiter or company is real, they would schedule a video call with you and have a round of group discussion for the interview. It would chart out very briefly about the details of the scheduled interview.

When you receive such emails, you should verify the email address of the recruiter from the website; check any notices for the recruitment. Where the recruiter doesn’t own any website, you should try searching for the address of the recruiter workplace and ask for inquiry about the recruiter`s work from the nearby people in the area. Also, if the recruiter doesn’t own a website and the size of his business or service is small, he wouldn’t offer you a lucrative salary and get involved in things like background check, etc. 

How to save yourself from recruitment fraud

• Look out for job openings on websites– Avoid following job openings posted as advertisements on pop-ups or advertisements which do not provide you with details of company, contact number, job position, etc. Even if you find any such advertisements and wish to apply, always go through the website and contact the company upfront asking them about such advertisements and mention the name of the recruitment agency.
• Check MCA website– Certain times there can be some shell companies created by someone from the core internal management of a reputed company. These shell companies are used to commit employment fraud. Hence, it is best practice to learn about incorporation of a company and check if the name is registered with the Registrar of companies by following through the MCA website   http://www.mca.gov.in/mcafoportal/showCheckCompanyName.do.
• Seek intervention of parent company– When you come across a subsidiary company of a reputed company or a company on whose panel the director or any other member is same as any other company, offering offer letters against sum, you should directly talk to the parent’s company Human Resource department and ask them about such company and offers made to you. 
• Lawful consideration– If there is any company asking to make a payment for anything related to the recruitment process, you should ask them to include such particulars in the offer letters itself or any other document prescribing surcharges to be borne by the candidate and reasoning of such levied charges should always justify lawful consideration. Remember, even if the company is genuine and the offers are genuine, but the charges levied for the recruitment process, if they are not lawful and you are not aware of it, for e.g. if the company would hire the candidates against payment made by candidates, and you agree to do so, you could be liable for abetment to fraud. (see here)
• Talk to placement officers of other colleges– If you receive offer letters from reputed companies who distinctly hire only and mostly students from top institutes or institutes that fall in the list of Institute of National importance, you should seek intervention of placement cell at your college to help you in making informed decisions. Mostly all reputed companies would hire freshers through on campus recruitment drives. So it is better and advisable that if you get an offer letter from prestigious companies, you should also seek help from placement cells of other institutes who invite such reputed companies for on-campus recruitment drives. They would guide you better regarding the process of recruitments of such companies and put you in touch with the HR of such companies.

How to report fake online job scam

• Report your complaint online at cyber cell–  Visit National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and you can follow the instructions. (Here)

1. If you are a new user, you will have to first register yourself through “Citizen Login”
2. You can log in to the “Report other crimes” section and click on “File a Complaint”. Click on “I accept” and then click on citizen login. You can create your own user ID and then come back to “File a Complaint Section”. Now with this user ID, you can log in to the portal and register your complaint. 
3. You will be then asked to fill the form by choosing the nature of complaint or incident or fraud from the dropdowns provided. The drop down would enlist various categories of cyber-crimes such as social media related crime, Ransomware, Financial fraud, hacking, Job fraud, crypto currency fraud, etc.
4. Insert the date, time and place of occurrence of incident.
5. In the “Provide Incident Details” you can upload details of the fraud by attaching screenshots of the email, SMS, transcripts of the call, audio of the recorded call. Also, mention the name of the person who mailed you, the name of the company, the email address, date and time of the SMS or call or email. In case you have received the offer on LinkedIn, then the LinkedIn profile of the person, the messages on LinkedIn, the mutual connections, etc.
6. Similarly, once you are done with providing incident details, you can move on to provide suspect details, complainant details and at last submit your complaint.
7. You can keep a track of your complaint and status of your complaint based on the complaint ID generated.

• Cyber-crime cell– You can as well register the complaint with the cyber-crime cell of the police station where the crime has happened or an FIR at a police station would also suffice in case there is no cyber cell. You can check the availability of cyber cells here. (See here)
• Remedy available under CRPC– In case the police refuses to lodge an FIR, you can approach the magistrate of first class or second class directly under section 156(3) of crpc. Such power upon the magistrate is conferred under section 190 of crpc. Under chapter 11 of IT act, 2000, appropriate criminal proceedings under relevant section can be initiated.
• Remedy under IT act, 2000– Under IT ACT, 2000, civil proceedings can be initiated before adjudicating officer for unauthorized banking transactions under section 46 of IT Act, 2000. The AO will then call the bank where the scammers account is functional. under section 48 While adjudging the quantum of compensation, the adjudicating officer shall have due regard to the following factors, namely: – (a) the amount of gain of unfair advantage, wherever quantifiable, made as a result of the default; (b) the amount of loss caused to any person as a result of the default; (c) the repetitive nature of the default.
• The adjudicating officer has the powers of a civil court under the Code of Civil Procedure while trying a suit, for the following matters:

(a) Summoning and enforcing the attendance of any person and examining him on oath;

(b) Requiring the discovery and production of documents or other electronic records;

 (c) Receiving evidence on affidavits;

(d) Issuing commissions for the examination of witnesses or documents;

(e) Reviewing its decisions.

Further, the adjudicating officer shall also be deemed to be a civil court for the purposes of ORDER XXI of the Civil Procedure Code, which are powers of execution of orders and decrees.

• Charge back– You can file a consumer Dispute resolution form with your bank asking for a chargeback. Using the chargeback mechanism you can mention the transaction details and ask the bank to reverse the amount from the merchant account to yours because the merchant has not provided you any goods or services which had been promised. You can file a chargeback request within 45-120 days of the transaction with the bank. Also, this is not the generic rule for all the banks. You will have to check out the chargeback policy thoroughly with your bank as well. 

Upon initiating a request for chargeback, your bank will send intimation to the merchant. If the merchant agrees that the service has not been provided, charge-back will be initiated, whereas if the merchant agrees that the service is provided, he will need to furnish additional proof. In the fraud cases, it is most likely that the account to which you were asked to debit belonged to a neutral party or an account used for money mulling in which case, either the merchant would not reply to the request or would not have enough money in the account. However, once he/she is caught, it could help to trace the fraudster. In case, the merchant does not respond within the given timeline, the amount will be automatically reversed to the claimant`s account. 

• Section 420 of IPC– You can as well file a complaint in a local police station for the offence of cheating under section 420 of IPC. If you were cheated and dishonestly induced to deliver any property to any person against the promises they made, section 420 is the recourse where the culprit can be punished for a term which may extend to 7 years with fine. 

However, this is not the fastest remedy as investigation will take its own time, knowing the limitations of the court in its aim of delivering speedy justice and ensuring that the guilt is proved beyond reasonable doubt. The most effective and speed remedy is to claim a chargeback with the bank. This would also add as evidence in case the banks fail to retrieve the transaction.  

Conclusion

Recruitment fraud can really come as a hope crushing moment in desperate times when college placements cannot be of any help. However, you should always be aware about the fact that no recruiter would ask you for any payments and any reputed company would not offer you a skyrocket or median package just on a perusal of your CV unless it is very outstanding and you come from any Institutes of National importance. These fraudsters are able to survive and expand their operations more rapidly because of the desperation to land a job and easy availability of your details as an employable candidate on the Internet. It is never a good idea to click on advertisements pop-ups that ask you to sign-up and to upload your resumes. It is always a good idea to talk to your peers, and relatives, faculty, placement cell before jumping to make any payment whatsoever. Do question yourself, if you are a potential employer for the recruiter, and you are selected on the basis of your CV, then why would a recruiter reject you for the job if you do not make the payments specified under the recruitment process upfront? In case you are going by the recruitment agency, they may ask you for some charges for the service, however, they are merely a facilitator in taking your CV to the suitable employment as per your profile. Even a recruitment agency cannot guarantee you about the job and where you sign up with the recruitment agency, you should be receiving job offers from the company via them and not directly. In case you are a victim of such frauds, do not hesitate in reporting, thinking that you were fooled. Come out openly and report the fraud.  

References

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276525343_A_Study_of_Social_Engineering_in_Online_Frauds/link/5ac93866aca272abdc60f032/download
2. https://chargebacks911.com/chargebacks/
3. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/job-fraud-victims-must-be-made-liable-for-abetment/articleshow/68133501.cms
4. https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/opinion-technology/7-steps-for-recovering-money-if-you-become-victim-of-an-online-recruitment-scam/

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