Two racketeers swindled `6.2 lakh from job seekers through a social networking site with prospects of working abroad, they were arrested by the Central Crime Branch net recently.

The CCB sleuths after making an enquiry found that the duo already had a dubious record of cheating job seekers to the tune of `50 lakh in 2006.

The two S Sundar (32) of Salem district and his associate S N Kesavaram (44) have been receiving 6.2 Lakh money in installments for the past seven months from S Venkatesan (26) and his friends Baghiyaraj, Kamalraj and Muruganandam all of them from Perambalur district after they promised getting jobs for the three in Canada, London and Dubai.

CCB officer Inspector S Sankaralingam said that, “It was through a popular social networking site that Sundar established contact with Venkatesan in February”. “After gaining the confidence of his ‘friend’, Sundar went for the kill, making claims of running an agency that helped jobseekers in finding visas to work “anywhere in the world” and Venkatesan fell for it. “The victims were already well placed - Venkatesan was an engineer working in Singapore and Muruganandam, a software professional, was in London.”

The duo after promising jobs in Canada, Dubai and London extracted money from the four men in instalments, collected their passports and with the help of a third accomplice had them affixed with fake visa stamps. The victims became suspicious after days passed and yet finding that the promised jobs were nowhere in sight. “They took their visas to the respective consulates and discovered that they were fake” Sankaralingam said.

When Sundar had come to meet the duo one day at Marina Beach at 11.45 pm, the waiting CCB team arrested him and seized ` 20,000 in cash, a laptop and fake visa papers. Kesavaram was also arrested and both were produced before the Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Saidapet, which remanded them in judicial custody.