A special court in Mumbai on December 6 denied bail to three people who recruited and sent Indian youths to Laos, Thailand to work for illegal cyber scammers.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which arrested three men in March – Jerry Jacob, Godfrey Alvares and Sudarshan Darade alias Bose – contested their plea saying they were running an uncertified recruitment agency from 2021-2022. It told the court that the accused had an agreement to send 1,000 youths to work at Longseng Company in Laos.
The NIA had earlier this year taken over from the Mumbai police the investigation into an alleged organized smuggling syndicate that lured youths and sent them abroad from India.
All the three accused presented the case against them to the court not for trafficking but for breach of contract for not providing services as per the employment contract given to the youth.
The accused were booked under criminal conspiracy, trafficking in persons and other sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Immigration Act.
The NIA alleged that the LongSheng company ran a fake call center and the recruits were used to run cyber scams to dupe people for financial gain. It said the accused, each with a specific role assigned to them, would interview, shortlist and then arrange logistics for the recruits.
They were then given ‘jobs’ in fake call centers with access to hacked Facebook accounts through which they sent friend requests to people in the US, UK and India under the fake name of ‘Anna Flitova’, a Russian model. NIA said. They were then made to convince customers to invest in crypto currency and then defrauded them of their investment.
Special Judge BD Shelke said, “To achieve the objective of the criminal conspiracy hatched by the accused and their other associates, they (accused) were in favor of recruiting and sending youths from India under the guise of employment in Longseng Company. order
The court also said that considering the nature and seriousness of the offence, there is a possibility that the accused may run away or tamper with the evidence or threaten the witness.