Fraud alert: Job notification on fake Visakhapatnam port trust website

VISAKHAPATNAM: A fake website purported to be the website of Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) was found to have posted a job notification for trainee engineer and diploma trainee posts and collected Rs 1,200 as application fee from each of the aspirants.
The incident came to light on Saturday after VPT officials started receiving calls about the application and selection processes.Officials said that they were surprised to receive such calls as they had no idea about recruitment.
VPT joint director Rajendra Kumar said on Sunday that the fake website had no relation with the organisation. Kumar said that VPT had filed a complaint with the cybercrime police station in Visakhapatnam.
Kumar added that VPT had not issued any notification to recruit trainee engineers and diploma engineers. “We have observed that some people created a fake website in the name of VPT and collected Rs 1,200 as application fee,” he said.
The official website of Visakhapatnam Port Trust is www.vizagport.com. The cyber criminals created a fake website with an altered domain name and posted a job notification for 2,250 posts. The basic salary for one of the fake posts was 80,000. The last date for application was listed as October 4 and the exam date was listed as October 25.
Speaking to TOI, sub-inspector, cybercrimes, Ravi Kishore said, “We will investigate the fake website case to identify the fraudsters. It is difficult to ascertain the number of people, who have fallen victim to the fraud since it’s a fake website.”
“There are several fake websites on the internet and sometimes it’s just too hard to identify. Cyber crooks are coming up with innovative ways of cheating netizens,” the SI added.