A man in his mid-20s was arrested in his south Calcutta office on Monday for allegedly cheating more than a dozen youths, including final-year engineering students, of over Rs 2 lakh by promising them jobs in Google India.

Sudam Chakrabarty, who lives with his family on Fern Road, pretended to be a senior human resource development manager of the IT giant and collected “processing fee of Rs 10,000-12,000” from each of the candidates he selected, said police.

He had even tied up with a recruitment agency named Pyramid Consultancy. The owner of the agency, Subhajit Bhattacharya, told cops that he was convinced that Chakrabarty worked for Google and hence allowed him to hold written tests for recruiting candidates.

Chakrabarty had made presentations to applicants at the agency. He met candidates who approached him directly at his office near Gariahat.

According to investigators, Chakrabarty had been duping youths, the majority of them final-year IT students at private engineering colleges in and around the city, for at least six months.

“He spoke fluent English and introduced himself as the head of recruitment in the western region. He did not specify the job sites to the candidates,” said an officer of the detective department’s cyber crime cell. Chakrabarty’s luck ran out when three of the candidates he “selected” got in touch with the company and found out that they had been duped. They lodged the complaint on the basis of which Chakrabarty was arrested.

The number of victims will go up once we start interrogating him, said an officer.