In the age of the Internet, nothing is impossible. Earlier this year, we heard about a phishing scam targeting Gmail users into giving up their account information by redirecting them to a page that looked similar to a Gmail login page. And now a law student from Delhi University has created a website, with a government ministry logo, to dupe people in order to earn money from them.
What happened
27-year-old Sumit Kumar, who failed to clear the judicial services examination, was arrested on Saturday. November 19, 2017, after the Delhi Police, received a complaint from an undersecretary in the Ministry of Women and Child Development. The complaint said that an unauthorised person or organisation had set up a fake website resembling that of the ministry’s official website.
About the website
According to a report by the Hindustan Times, Kumar’s website had the domain name ‘wcdo.org.in’, which is similar to the ministry’s official website ‘wcd.nic.in’. It also carried the ministry’s logo without permission to confuse the applicants. The website even had government’s helpline numbers for women and children to give it an authentic look.
Take a look at the website:
Fake Ministry website (Photo: Twitter)
The report further states that Kumar had advertised nearly 6,715 vacancies on his website charging Rs 800 for each job. He halved the fee for the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe categories to make it look more realistic.
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Investigation details
The investigation revealed that the website was registered to an NGO and that the payments were being deposited to an ICICI account. The account details from the bank helped the bank to apprehend the suspect.
Upon interrogation, Kumar reportedly told the Police that he had set up an NGO by getting it registered with the sub-registrar in central Delhi in March this year. He then sought the help of a web-designer to create a website as per his requirements. Kumar also told the Police that his organisation ran no schools and that he was doing this just to earn money.
According to the Police, he managed to cheat over 4,000 applicants of Rs 20 lakh in just two days.
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The Police are now looking for three suspects who helped Kumar to set up his website.
