How to spot a fake internship offer

What a fake internship offer looks like

The usual order is a quick selection, a normal-looking stipend, then a payment request dressed up as paperwork. An employer may pay an intern or may not, but it doesn't charge them to start.

In October 2025, final-year cyber security students at a Chennai college got an email offering an internship with a ₹15,000 monthly stipend, Dinamalar reported. After a video interview, they were asked to pay ₹2,000 over UPI for a "police clearance certificate". On checking, the offer turned out to be fraudulent.

Look at what made it believable. There was an interview, a company name and a stipend in the usual range for an intern. The only thing out of place was money moving from the student to the company.

Red flags to check before you reply

Most fake offers fail at least one of these checks. Run them before you send Aadhaar, PAN or bank details, and before you pay anything.

How to check if the company is real

Start with the registration. Every company incorporated in India gets a 21-character Corporate Identification Number (CIN), and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs lets the public look it up.

Tally's guide to CIN search lists the steps: on mca.gov.in, open MCA Services, choose View Company/LLP Master Data, then enter the CIN and the captcha. The result shows the company's status, date of incorporation, registered office and directors.

Then compare what you find with the offer. A company incorporated a few weeks ago, registered in another state and hiring 50 paid interns at once deserves more questions. Check too that the website's domain matches the address that emailed you.

Watch for borrowed names

Scammers attach the names of ministries and well-known institutes because students trust them. Check every such claim on the institution's own website, never through the link you were sent.

In March 2026, IIT Roorkee warned that some organisations were "falsely claiming association with IIT Roorkee" to promote internships and training, and said it had no link with one of them, Launched Global, according to Careers360. The institute told students to verify any such opportunity only through its official channels.

In July 2026, PIB Fact Check flagged a Google Form offering internships it said had approval from the MSME and Corporate Affairs ministries. Neither ministry had issued any notification or application form, All India Radio reported.

Government-backed listings do exist, in one place. AICTE's National Internship Portal showed more than 79 lakh internships from 83,170 companies when we checked on 12 October 2026, so if an offer claims government backing, look for it there first.

Paid training is different from a paid job

Some legitimate programmes charge a fee, and DevIt is one of them. The difference lies in what the money buys and when you're told about it.

DevIt runs online, project-based developer internships. You pay a one-time fee per track, there's no stipend, and in return you get graded projects, quizzes, an offer letter and a certificate with an ID that anyone can verify. The fee is on the track page before you sign up: on 12 October 2026, the Frontend Developer Internship cost ₹199 for one month at its Early Bird price.

A scam runs in the opposite order. It promises you a stipend first, then asks for money once you're "selected", for something no employer charges for.

If a programme does charge, judge it like any course you'd pay for. Is the syllabus public, who runs it, and what's the refund policy? DevIt's fees are non-refundable once the internship starts, so read the track list and each track's prerequisites before you pay.

What to do if you've already paid

Report it the same day, while the transaction is recent. Don't wait to see whether the company replies.

Call 1930, the national cyber fraud helpline that the Ministry of Home Affairs made operational in April 2022. Calls are answered by State Police staff, according to the government-run Vikaspedia portal. Then file a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.

• Keep screenshots of the offer, the chats, the UPI transaction ID and the payee's UPI handle.
• Tell your bank and ask them to raise a dispute on the payment.
• Tell your college's training and placement cell so they can warn other students.
• Don't pay a second "refund processing" fee. It's the same scam asking twice.

Where to find internships you can trust

Use channels where someone has already checked the employer. Your college's training and placement cell, a company's own careers page and AICTE's portal all do part of that work for you.

For tech roles, ask for a skill test early. A company that wants to see your code is spending its own time on you, which a scammer has no reason to do. If you want something to show before you apply, our guide to frontend projects for your resume covers what reviewers open first, and are virtual internships worth it explains how remote roles compare.

Cases, portal figures and DevIt fees checked 12 October 2026. Fees change, so check the track page for the current price.