Police on Thursday arrested 22 employees of a call centre from Udyog Vihar Phase 5 for allegedly duping at least 1,000 people in the last eight months and making more than ₹1.25 crore on the pretext of offering jobs and facilitating their placement in multiple companies.

Police said they received a tip-off following which they raided the call centre and caught the employees making calls and duping people.

Police said six partners had been running the call centre in Udyog Vihar’s Phase 5 since September last year. Two of the owners, identified as Sonu of Hans Enclave near Rajiv Chowk and Raj (both identified by their first names) from Delhi, who were present at the call centre at the time of the raid were arrested along with the manager Durgesh.

Police said Sonu’s brother Sanjay (identified by his first name) was the kingpin and had been arrested several times in the past in job fraud cases. Four cases were registered against the two brothers in Gurugram, Hyderabad, Gujarat and West Bengal. The remaining partners are yet to be arrested, said police.

Police allegedly recovered 27 mobile phones, 21 CPUs, one laptop and ₹38,000 cash from their possession and three suspects were taken on four-days police remand. The remaining suspects were granted bail on Friday after being produced before court, said police.

Explaining the modus operandi of the gang, police said the suspects ran a placement agency and used to call victims, claiming to be representatives of prominent companies and agencies. They had also placed advertisements on several online job portals and asked victims to transfer money to process their job requests and other related expenses. Their website claimed that they had placed more than 18,500 people since September last year, said police.

Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said after they received a tip off on Thursday, they formed a team and raided the call centre. “When the team reached there, they saw the executives making calls and discussing job openings with the applicants. They were asking them to pay a processing fee and registration charges after confirming to them that they had been finalised for the position,” he said.

During questioning, the suspects revealed that they charged a registration fee of ₹6,500, then charged an additional ₹28,000 for document verification. After receiving these two payments, they demanded ₹89,000 as commission. They allegedly duped a candidate of ₹10 lakh, said police.

Sangwan said the employees had also sent scanned copy of offer letters and the victims too signed an agreement for the position offered to them. “However, after receiving the contract, when the victims contacted the company whose offer letter they received, they were told that there were no such openings and that they had been duped,” he said.

Police said the suspects also created several fake email ids and domain of the companies to dupe their victims.

Police said they had received several complaints from people living in different states. Astha Modi, deputy commissioner of police, headquarters, said police begun trailing this gang after they received information. “The gang operated in an organised manner and had different people performing different tasks, such as making calls, preparing offer letters, sending job profiles, creating bank accounts with fake documentation and withdrawing the cash. They had opened more than 10 bank accounts on different names,” she said.

Police said there are five more members in the gang, who will be arrested soon.

Modi said that in view of the increasing cyber crime cases, people need to be more aware on social media and internet. “Whenever anyone surfs the internet, they should first check all facts and whether the site has credibility. The fine print should be read and cross-checking must be done before submitting any documents. OTP and bank details must never be shared. In case anyone has been duped, they must contact the cyber fraud helpline number 1930 immediately and report their case,” she said.