How to spot a fake job offer in India, and what to do

Start with the one rule that catches most scams: a genuine employer does not charge you money to give you a job. Registration fees, training fees, uniform or laptop charges, security deposits and 'refundable' processing fees are all reasons to stop. The request may be small at first and presented as a formality. That is the point: a small amount feels safe to pay, and once someone has paid once, the scheme asks again.

It helps to know the common shapes these schemes take. One is the offer without an interview: an offer letter, sometimes on a real company's letterhead, for a job you barely applied for, followed by a fee before joining. Another is the online task job, where you are paid small amounts for liking videos, rating hotels or writing reviews, and then asked to deposit money to unlock larger tasks; the early payments are there to build trust. A third is the work-from-home data entry job with a charge to start. A fourth is impersonation, where the message claims to come from a well-known company or a government department. And a fifth is the overseas job offered by an agent who wants money and your passport before anything is confirmed.

Look at the message itself. Warning signs include pay that is far higher than the work would normally earn, contact only through WhatsApp or Telegram, an email from a free personal address rather than the company's own domain, pressure to decide or pay today, and any request for an OTP, a bank login, card details or payment to a personal UPI ID. Spelling mistakes and odd formatting are common, but do not rely on them; some fake offers are carefully made.

Then check the employer, which takes a few minutes. Find the company's official website yourself, by searching for it, rather than by clicking a link in the message. See whether the job appears on the company's own careers page. Call the company on a phone number taken from its official website and ask whether the offer is genuine. Check that the recruiter's name and email address belong to the company. For a company registered in India, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs website lets anyone look up basic details of a registered company. And search the company's name with words like 'fraud' or 'scam' to see whether others have reported the same message.

Jobs abroad need extra care, because the money involved is larger and the risks go beyond money. In India, recruiting agents who recruit workers for jobs abroad must be registered under the Emigration Act, 1983. You can check whether an agent is registered in the list of active recruiting agents on the government's eMigrate website, emigrate.gov.in, and a registered agent should display its registration number. Do not hand over your passport or pay anything to an agent you have not checked, and be wary of being sent abroad on a visit or tourist visa for what is described as a job.

Protect your personal details as carefully as your money. Never share an OTP with anyone, for any reason. Do not send copies of your identity documents before you have a verified offer, and where an employer accepts it, use a masked Aadhaar, which hides most of the number. Do not install screen-sharing or remote-access apps because a recruiter asks you to. And never agree to receive money into your bank account and pass it on for someone else, even if it is described as part of a job: letting others use your account to move money can draw you into a crime.

If it has already happened, act quickly and do not pay again. Stop all payments and communication with the people involved. If you have lost money, call the National Cyber Crime Helpline on 1930 as soon as you can, and report the fraud on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in. Tell your bank or payment app straight away. Keep everything: screenshots of messages, phone numbers, email addresses, the offer letter, transaction IDs and payment receipts. You can also go to your local police station. Fraudulent calls, SMS and WhatsApp messages can be reported on Chakshu, part of the Department of Telecommunications' Sanchar Saathi portal at sancharsaathi.gov.in.

Be especially careful in the days after a scam. People who have lost money are often contacted by someone claiming they can recover it, for a fee. That is usually a second scam.

Finally, tell people. Being deceived is not a reason for shame; these schemes are designed by people who do it every day. A message in your college or family group, or a word with your placement cell, can stop the same thing happening to somebody else. And if you are looking for genuine openings, use sources that do not charge you: your college placement cell, the employer's own careers page, and the government's National Career Service portal at ncs.gov.in, where registration is free. GullyFuture never charges job seekers anything either, at any stage.