BBC hindi
Jyoti Yadav was among those cheated by scammers
A few weeks ago, Indian police discovered that scammers had opened a fake bank branch – complete with a logo, office furniture and even a few employees – in a village in the state of Chhattisgarh. BBC Hindi pieced together what happened.
Jyoti Yadav was elated when she got a job as an office assistant at a newly opened bank branch near her village.
She had been looking for work for four years, facing increasing financial pressure.
Bank officials asked her to join immediately, and she agreed because it was State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest government-backed lender and one of its brands the most recognizable.
But barely a week after his arrival, police and employees from a nearby SBI branch arrived at the bank – about 200 km (124 miles) from Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh – and told them that it was was a fake.
Yadav was stunned. She said the people who gave her a job conducted an interview, gave her an appointment letter and provided her with an ID card, with a promised salary of 30,000 rupees ($357; 273 pounds). sterling) per month. She had started working with five other people.
Police have arrested one person and say they are looking for eight others.
Employment scams are not uncommon in India, where millions of young people are desperate for stable employment. In 2022, more than two dozen men who thought they would get jobs in the Indian Railways were made to count trains for days.
The jobs crisis is particularly acute in small towns and villages, where work opportunities are limited, often forcing young people to take risks, such as paying bribes – which is illegal in India – to jobs that promise to secure their future.
Police said the six employees of the fake bank were from financially weak backgrounds and some of them paid large sums as bribes for the work.
BBC hindi
The fake bank had a huge SBI logo, a large lobby and separate booths which convinced people of its legitimacy.
An officer involved in the investigation told BBC Hindi the motive appeared to be to defraud job seekers of money.
According to the initial investigation, a large number of people were asked for money on the pretext of getting a job in a bank and were sent to a fake agency for “training”, the officer said .
After about two weeks of training, they were sent back with the promise that they would soon be “appointed” to a branch of the SBI, he added.
Those who were allegedly deceived say the fraudsters made the bank appear legitimate.
Yadav says she filled out an online form, uploaded her education certificates and submitted biometrics as part of the onboarding process – common when joining many Indian companies.
“I never felt like I was defrauded. But now everything is ruined,” she said.
She claimed to have paid 250,000 rupees – a sum she struggled to raise – as a bribe for the job.
Rohini Sahu, a native of a village in the neighboring district, was offered a job as a marketing manager by the fake employers.
Sahu told BBC Hindi that her offer letter stated that she had been appointed to the Raipur branch of the SBI, but she had to undergo training in that branch.
The letter, the sign, the building and its infrastructure convinced her that it was a real bank.
“No one could have imagined in their wildest dreams that this wasn’t a legitimate bank,” she says.
BBC Hindi
Ajay Agarwal had requested to open a kiosk under an existing SBI scheme
Residents of the village where the branch was located said they were happy with its opening because it promised easy access to banking services.
But some villagers who wanted to open accounts were told by employees that the bank was still installing servers and that they should return next month.
For some, it also offered business opportunities.
Ajay Agarwal, one of the villagers, immediately applied to run a kiosk under a program allowing people to operate limited banking services outside the bank premises.
Such bank kiosks are common in villages and small towns across India.
But he says he quickly became skeptical after his application was not approved and approached the nearby SBI branch to ask about the branch.
Soon, local police raided the bank. But the “manager” of the branch had already fled.
The man they arrested, police say, is also accused in another employment scam in the state. He made no statement in police custody.
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