My College Khoj

A summary of what happened?

My College Khoj, operating from Viman Nagar in Pune, presented itself as a consultancy offering assistance with overseas education and employment opportunities. However, investigations have revealed that the organization was involved in fraudulent activities, deceiving numerous individuals seeking to study or work abroad.

Key Allegations and Incidents:

1. Defrauding Students with False Promises:
   • The consultancy lured students by promising admissions to prestigious foreign educational institutions. Victims were charged substantial fees under various pretexts, including application fees, scholarship fees, visa processing charges, and health insurance. For instance, a 24-year-old woman from Thane was duped of approximately ₹2 lakh with assurances of admission to a university in Italy.
     Lokmat Times
2. Issuance of Counterfeit Documents:
   • My College Khoj provided forged documents to clients, including fake bank statements, offer letters, PAN cards, and Aadhaar cards. These counterfeit documents were used to falsely demonstrate the financial eligibility of applicants for overseas education and visa processes.
     My Pune Pulse
3. Raids and Arrests:
   • In February 2024, the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Pune Police raided the office of My College Khoj, seizing counterfeit documents and stamps. During the operation, two individuals, Saurabh Jha and Poonam Rajpurohit, were arrested, while the main accused, Amit Kumar and Pratibha Bhati, remained at large.
     Punekar News
4. Political Intervention and Demands for Action:
   • The Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) in Pune demanded strict action against My College Khoj for defrauding students with fake overseas job offers. They lodged complaints with the Pune Police Commissioner, leading to the aforementioned raids and arrests.
     Free Press Journal

Modus Operandi:

The consultancy targeted economically disadvantaged students aspiring to study abroad. They enticed these individuals with promises of facilitating admissions and securing visas for foreign educational institutions. The victims were coerced into paying amounts ranging from ₹2 lakh to ₹2.5 lakh in multiple installments, covering various fabricated fees. The organization further manipulated the process by creating fake bank statements to falsely represent the financial standing of the applicants.

Impact on Victims:

Many students, including those from Nagpur and other parts of Maharashtra, were left financially and emotionally devastated. Their aspirations for higher education abroad were shattered, and they suffered significant monetary losses due to the fraudulent activities of My College Khoj.

Current Status:

Investigations are ongoing, with law enforcement agencies working to apprehend the remaining accused and provide justice to the victims. The case has highlighted the need for stringent regulations and oversight of educational consultancies to prevent such fraudulent activities in the future.

This situation serves as a cautionary tale for aspiring students to exercise due diligence and verify the credentials of consultancies offering overseas education and employment opportunities.

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was My College Khoj trying to hide?

My College Khoj‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling My College Khoj in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information My College Khoj may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: My College Khoj – A Fraudulent Educational Consultancy Scheme

Introduction

My College Khoj, an educational consultancy based in Viman Nagar, Pune, presented itself as a facilitator for overseas education and employment opportunities. It targeted young, ambitious individuals seeking higher education abroad, offering services that included admissions to foreign universities, visa processing, and financial documentation. However, what began as a hopeful journey for students soon turned into a nightmare, as My College Khoj was exposed for operating a fraudulent scheme. This investigative report details the allegations, complaints, and legal proceedings against the organization.

Background of My College Khoj

Operating under the guise of a legitimate consultancy, My College Khoj claimed to assist students with:

• Admissions to reputed foreign universities.
• Visa applications and guidance.
• Financial documentation, including bank statements and sponsorship letters.
• Scholarship facilitation for economically disadvantaged students.

Their services appeared comprehensive, making them attractive to students and families unaware of their ulterior motives.

Key Allegations and Complaints

1. Fraudulent Practices

• Fake Overseas Job and Education Offers:
  • My College Khoj falsely assured students of admissions to prestigious universities and lucrative job opportunities abroad. Students were lured by promises of guaranteed placements in countries like Italy, the UK, and Canada.
  • Victims were charged exorbitant fees ranging from ₹2 lakh to ₹2.5 lakh for services like application processing, visa assistance, health insurance, and scholarship facilitation.
• Issuance of Counterfeit Documents:
  • The consultancy provided forged documents, including:
    • Fake bank statements showing inflated account balances to meet visa requirements.
    • Counterfeit offer letters from universities.
    • False PAN cards, Aadhaar cards, and sponsorship letters.

2. Exploiting Vulnerable Students

• My College Khoj primarily targeted students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who had limited knowledge of international education processes.
• Victims were convinced to pay in installments, making the scheme accessible even to those with financial constraints. Many families took loans or used savings to meet the consultancy’s demands.

Legal Proceedings and Police Actions

1. Complaints Filed

• Several victims, including a 24-year-old woman from Thane and students from Nagpur, filed complaints with the Pune Police, alleging fraud by My College Khoj.
• The Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), a youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party, intervened and demanded strict action against the consultancy. This prompted a formal investigation by Pune’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW).

2. Raids and Arrests

• In February 2024, the Pune Police raided the offices of My College Khoj in Viman Nagar.
• Seized Items:
  • Counterfeit stamps, fake bank documents, and fraudulent university offer letters.
  • Equipment used to create falsified financial and identity documents.
• Arrests Made:
  • Two employees, Saurabh Jha and Poonam Rajpurohit, were apprehended.
  • The main accused, Amit Kumar and Pratibha Bhati, are still at large.

3. Charges Filed

• The consultancy faces charges of:
  • Cheating and forgery under the Indian Penal Code.
  • Violation of the Information Technology Act for the creation of counterfeit digital documents.
  • Deception under laws governing consumer protection.

Modus Operandi

• Step 1: Attracting Clients:
  • My College Khoj advertised heavily on social media and through word-of-mouth referrals, targeting students aspiring for foreign education.
  • Promotional campaigns highlighted guaranteed placements and scholarships, which created trust among potential clients.
• Step 2: Payment Extraction:
  • Clients were asked to pay initial processing fees to secure their applications.
  • Additional payments were demanded for fabricated expenses, including health insurance, visa fees, and scholarship registration.
• Step 3: Issuing Fake Documents:
  • The consultancy provided fraudulent financial documents to meet the visa eligibility criteria.
  • Students were also handed fake offer letters from universities to create a façade of authenticity.
• Step 4: Disappearing Act:
  • Once payments were made, My College Khoj became unresponsive, leaving students stranded with invalid documents and no recourse.

Impact on Victims

1. Financial Ruin

• Victims lost substantial sums, ranging from ₹2 lakh to ₹2.5 lakh per student. Many families borrowed money or liquidated savings to fund the consultancy’s fees, plunging them into financial distress.

2. Emotional and Career Devastation

• Students who had pinned their hopes on studying or working abroad were left disillusioned. Their academic and professional timelines were disrupted, with some unable to recover from the setbacks.

3. Legal and Visa Complications

• Victims faced additional challenges when applying for visas in the future, as their names were linked to fraudulent documents submitted by the consultancy.

Political and Social Response

• BJYM’s Intervention:
  • The BJYM in Pune actively pursued the case, filing complaints with the Police Commissioner and organizing protests to demand accountability.
  • Their involvement brought the case into the public eye, pressuring law enforcement to act swiftly.
• Public Awareness Campaigns:
  • Following the scandal, educational institutions and NGOs in Pune began awareness drives to educate students about verifying consultancy credentials before engaging their services.

Current Status

• Investigations are ongoing, with the Pune Police actively pursuing the main accused, Amit Kumar and Pratibha Bhati.
• Victims are being urged to come forward and provide evidence to strengthen the case against My College Khoj.
• The incident has sparked broader discussions about the regulation of educational consultancies in India, with calls for stricter oversight to prevent such scams in the future.

Conclusion

The My College Khoj case exemplifies the dangers of unregulated educational consultancies exploiting the aspirations of students. By promising life-changing opportunities, the organization manipulated vulnerable individuals into parting with substantial sums of money, leaving them financially and emotionally devastated. The swift action by the Pune Police and the involvement of political groups like BJYM have shed light on the issue, but much work remains to ensure accountability and justice for the victims.

Recommendations

1. For Law Enforcement:
   • Expedite the apprehension of the main accused.
   • Establish a dedicated unit to investigate fraud in educational consultancies.
2. For Regulatory Authorities:
   • Implement stringent licensing and accreditation requirements for educational consultancies.
   • Create a national database of verified consultancies accessible to the public.
3. For Students and Families:
   • Verify the credentials of consultancies through government databases and third-party reviews.
   • Avoid upfront payments and insist on transparency in the application process.
4. For Policymakers:
   • Introduce laws mandating stricter penalties for fraud in education and overseas job placements.
   • Promote awareness campaigns to educate students about potential scams.

By addressing these systemic issues, stakeholders can work together to restore trust and ensure that students are protected from similar fraudulent schemes in the future.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of My College Khoj (or actors working on behalf of My College Khoj), we will inform My College Khoj of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that My College Khoj may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from My College Khoj, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to My College Khoj to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since My College Khoj made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which My College Khoj is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for My College Khoj

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is My College Khoj Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. My College Khoj used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. My College Khoj could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like My College Khoj have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. My College Khoj is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by My College Khoj creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, My College Khoj either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about My College Khoj, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. My College Khoj is in great company ….

What else is My College Khoj hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [My College Khoj] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on My College Khoj that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.