noida

Updated: Aug 23, 2017 09:46 IST

They thought it was a lucrative job that could earn them some good bucks. Until they realised they had been fooled.

The Ghaziabad police’s crime branch on Tuesday arrested five members of a gang that allegedly cheated hundreds of men on the pretext of providing them jobs of ‘male escort’ for women customers.

The young men, the officials said, applied from as far as Tamil Nadu and Kerala apart from NCR and eastern Uttar Pradesh. In a bid to lure them, they were sent pictures of young women for ‘tie-ups.’

The crime branch also busted a call centre being run by one Ashu Chaudhary from a flat in Shastri Nagar. Officials said Ashu studied BBA and teamed up with four others to lure young men for the ‘job’.

“They duped nearly 1,000 persons who paid ‘processing fees’. Once the amount was credited to their online wallet, they would send pictures of young women to the applicants and ask them to select one of them. The photos were downloaded from profiles of women on social networking sites,” said Akash Tomar, superintendent of police (SP city).

The police are verifying if the gang had access to any such ‘women customers’.

The gang used to hired space on a classified booking website and invited applications from interested young men.

“The gang would tell the men that ‘services’ included accompanying women on demand, body massage and ‘other’ things as demanded,” an official said.

Apart from Ashu, the police arrested Himanshu Sharan, Harsh Chaudhary, Virat Chaudhary and Mohit Chaudhary in connection with an FIR lodged at Kavi Nagar police station by a complainant.

The case was lodged under sections of cheating and provisions of The Information Technology Act.

The crime branch received over a dozen complaints from such applicants. Sources in the crime branch said Ashu had gone to Rajasthan two years ago and paid Rs 50,000 to a man who gave him some ‘tricks of the trade’.

“The applicants were told to go to the gym for fitness exercises before being sent to the women. In between, the gang would block the applicants’ numbers. We got in touch with a number of people but they were not ready to come forward as their families would know they were interested in such a job. But nearly a dozen complaints arrived and we started investigation,” the official said.

The applicants were asked to deposit Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 as processing fees.

“They told us about an account where nearly Rs 10 lakh is expected to be deposited. They hired bank accounts of two men and paid them commission,” the official said.

Tomar said the police will move to freeze the bank account and will recommend provisions of the Gangster Act against the five accused. The police recovered laptops, mobiles, ATM cards and different mobile SIM cards from the suspects.