PANJIM: The Old Goa police arrested Aniket Gaikwad, a native of Ahmednagar, Maharashtra on the charge of cheating Goan job aspirants to lakhs of rupees on the pretext of providing jobs abroad.

Gaikwad (25) was arrested upon the complaint of Mayur Kunkolkar of Chimbel, who stated that from November 2022 till February 2023, accused Savio Silas Tolentino Da Silva of Corlim and Aniket Gaikwad, with their common intention posed themselves as recruitment agents and induced him to pay money on pretext of providing him job abroad and also on passengers and cargo ships with foreign companies.

But both the accused deceived the complainant and others and cheated them for an amount of Rs 13 lakh approximately.

The Goan youth got attracted to the lucrative offers given by Gaikwad through another accused Savio Da Silva, who also took passports and other documents from the aspirants.

The accused also called them to Mumbai for training, document verification etc but failed to provide jobs as the offers were fake. Gaikwad also switched off his cell number when youths started asking to return their monies. Each job aspirant had paid around Rs 5 lakh, according to the police.

Initially the accused promised youths to return the money and later stopped receiving their phone calls and absconded from the given address, the police said adding that they were on track of the accused for last five days and arrested Gaikwad at Mumbai with the joint efforts with Deonar police station, Mumbai.

The accused was later brought to Goa on transit remand and has been placed under arrest. It is suspected that the accused had cheated more than 100 innocent youths involving huge amount.

Further investigations are on under the guidance of LPSI Lauren Sequeira, police said.