[Mercurie]

A friend of mine has received a job offer from an Australian Airline (http://www.austraair.com) through naukri.com.  The necessary appointment letter etc. has been sent to him and the airline’s agent in Hyderabad is asking for Rs.50,000 to be sent to him (via Western Union) before he can send a copy of visa and air ticket to my friend.  

My friend promptly contacted me (since I work for a law firm and have some contacts in Australia) to seek my opinion before sending the money.  On my research this seems to be a big scam and just a high-tech method of making monies and cheating people.  The airline’s agent in Hyderabad had apparently contacted several people informing them of the same story.  The click on their above website reveals nothing but the first page and nothing is clickable.  In my opinion, someone has just registered a domain name (from Vishakhapattanam) and designed the first page and upon contacting the person in Hyderabad about this, he says that the website is protected not to be opened from any Asian country!!!!

On my further research from www.whois.com, the following details come up regarding the registrant of the above website.

[Start]

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and
Registrars.
Registration Service Provided By: SREE JAIN INFOTECH
Contact: +91.8912755103
Website: http://www.bookandhost.com

Domain Name: AUSTRAAIR.COM

Registrant:
Sree Jain Infotech
Jaswanth Kumar Jain (jaswanthjain@rediffmail.com)
9-19-14/1,CBM Compound
opp:Timpany Sr School
visakhapatnam
ap,530003
IN
Tel. +91.8912755103

Creation Date: 22-Sep-2005
Expiration Date: 22-Sep-2006

Domain servers in listed order:
dns1.sreejaininfotech.net
dns2.sreejaininfotech.net

[End]

Please can someone (either from Hyderabad or elsewhere) throw some light on the above.

Mercurie

[Sudheer Poppa]

Can people be so dumb to create a webpage like this for an airline ?? And ofcourse show a quantas aircraft...

Well you need to credit them to brushing off the quantas tail! Some smartness huh... Who else has observation on the page..

Sorry mercurie, cant be of my help

[iwanttogoback]

mercurie

there are very few airlines in australia, and I am not aware of this one. sounds like a scam to me.

let us know how it turns out.

[Mercurie]

Sudheer, IWTGB

Thanks.  I will indeed let you know what turns out.  This is definitely a scam and I hope that people do their homework first before sending any money upfront.

Mercurie

[Mercurie]

Chaps,

Just wanted to let you know that this was indeed a scam.  

A scam??  

A big scam.     

I don’t know how many people are being cheated so far, however, my friend thanked me for the advice and he is happy that he did not waste his money and time of course.

Mercurie

[dzibead]

Mercurie, your research into the registrant of that website was good.  What is the likelihood that a real Austrialian airline's website would be registered to some dude in India?  Zero!  So you uncovered very clear evidence that the whole thing was a scam, as your friend's experience confirmed  

What can be done about crooks like this guy?  Can't he be reported to the authorities in India?

[Mercurie]

Dzibead,

Exactly, that is what I thought – why would an Australian company (and that too an airline) use Indian web hosting provider.  Also, the whole thing looked fishy from the beginning:

The website is inaccessible from Asian countries.
Send money first to Hyderabad and only then the visa and airline ticket will follow.
Website being hosted from India
Moreover, the contact details which were provided, all wrong!

Regarding reporting such scam to the appropriate authorities, of course this should be reported.  I did tell my friend to do so via Interpol and I wait to hear from him as to what he has done.  Surely, the person in question in Hyderabad should be reported to the authorities, so as he does not cheat any more people.

Mercurie

[anusam]

I too have got this message and he asked for money upfront.  his name is DR Alex and he answers the mobile # + 91 93947 30660 ( that is if he picks up your call.)  his mobile is always switched off or on busy mode.  this is the scam of hte year .

I contacted the website hoster and asked him for details of the owner of the website.  He replied that he did everything on email and does not know the true identity.  I then asked him if he received his payment also by email for which he just stammered.  I think he is also involved.  Also the mail id's come from a source in UK to which also I have sent a message. NO REPLY.  Also Naukri was informed and they sent standard reply without even going thru the contents.  This austrair person has registered himself  as a recruiter from naukrigulf.com.   Even they have not replied thus far giving the feeling that it is much more than this man alone.

[captmahajan]

as a general rule, anybody asking for either money for giving you a job or your original documents upfront should be dropped like a bad meal.

[Mercurie]

captmahajan, on Jun 15 2006, 05:45 AM, said:

as a general rule, anybody asking for either money for giving you a job or your original documents upfront should be dropped like a bad meal.

CM

No, it should not be just dropped like a bad meal.  It should be treated properly.  The matter needs to be reported to the concerned authorities in the place where this company is operating from (in this case, its Hyderabad).  By doing this, we would be doing something good for the society and those innocents, who will otherwise spend their monies and time.  

Mercurie.

[cyberhippie]

These scams abound in Goa, jobs in the middle east but first you have to pay an agent. He promises the world and great wages, you pay him and the job never transpires!! A friend got caught for 70,000rps (I did warn him)

[bookandhost]

anusam, on Jun 14 2006, 10:48 PM, said:

I too have got this message and he asked for money upfront.  his name is DR Alex and he answers the mobile # + 91 93947 30660 ( that is if he picks up your call.)  his mobile is always switched off or on busy mode.  this is the scam of hte year .

I contacted the website hoster and asked him for details of the owner of the website.  He replied that he did everything on email and does not know the true identity.  I then asked him if he received his payment also by email for which he just stammered.  I think he is also involved.  Also the mail id's come from a source in UK to which also I have sent a message. NO REPLY.  Also Naukri was informed and they sent standard reply without even going thru the contents.  This austrair person has registered himself  as a recruiter from naukrigulf.com.   Even they have not replied thus far giving the feeling that it is much more than this man alone.

Hi I am the company who provided hosting to this website called austraair.com and yes I did receive a call from this person but we represent only the hosting company and its quite natural nothing big DEAL about the issue that who ever comes online takes a domain name and hosting automatically gets alloted with it. No one does check the identity for that company, if they check then I think yahoo, godaddy should all stop online registrations feature and they should also stop instant registrations saying that u r not having a valid certificate to have this name, to have it not validity of name there is a big governing body ICANN sitting there and deciding, if anyone complains them then they would reveal things and they would say us to stop things on this website we can do that, yes its a great and good thing you have done that u have tried to find out the root of it and might be the registrant used some fake details and surprisingly used email address which relates my name, but my id was never jaswanthjain@rediffmail.com, I have my standard id which is jaswanth@bookandhost.com

So I request you to approach legally to that person to get it resolved but do not spoil our name, inspite of we giving u proper responses, you want to put our name here.