Delhi crime: The CBI has registered a case against five people for allegedly siphoning off USD 400,000 (Rs 3.37 crore as per current rates) retirement funds of a US citizen while posing as Microsoft tech support, officials said on Friday (July 7).
The accused persons were identified as Praful Gupta, Sarita Gupta, Kunal Almadi, Gaurav Pahwa who hail from Delhi and Rishabh Dixit who belongs to Kanpur, who were booked for fraud based on the inputs from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), they added.
The CBI raided their premises in Dilshad Garden and Janakpuri in the national capital and Kidwai Nagar in Kanpur, the agency said in a statement.
It was alleged that the victim’s, identified as Lisa Roth, laptop was hacked after which she dialled a number on the screen and a person feigning affiliation with Microsoft misguided her by informing there were some wire transfers from her retirement account.
How did the forgery happen?
According to the CBI FIR, the imposter told her to contact Fidelity Investments.
When Roth dialled the number given by purported Microsoft employee, she was asked to transfer money from her Fidelity Investments account to a more secure account.
The FIR said that the caller, during the phone call deceitfully gained unauthorised remote access to her system and executed a successful transfer of a staggering USD 300,000 (Rs 2.48 crore as per current rates) from her
Fidelity Investments Account to her account with First State Bank.
“The caller then opened an account with Binance.com on behalf of Roth and advised her to wire the USD 300,000 to an account titled "Prime Trust" with Binance.com,” it said.
The FIR stated that ‘accordingly, Roth went to First State Bank and tried to transfer USD 3 lakh to 'Prime Trust’.
"However, after a few days the said transaction was declined by Binance. com as she had wrongly written 'Prime Title' in place of 'Prime Trust', and the amount was returned to her First State Bank account," it stated.
US discovers the fraud
The CBI alleged that after the transaction was declined, the caller again contacted Roth advising her to transfer additional money from her Fidelity Investments account to her First State Bank account so that an amount of USD 400,000 (Rs 3.37 crore as per current rates) could be transferred to a more secure account.
The caller exercising unauthorised remote control over Roth's system, opened her an OKcoin account using her mobile number and e-mail ID, and advised her to transfer the USD 400,000 to it.
She transferred the said amount to the OKcoin account on June 7 last year. However, when she logged into her OKcoin account a few weeks later, she discovered that her account was empty.
The pilfered amount was astutely converted into cryptocurrency, which was further transferred to the following five persons in their Binance and FTX wallets, the FIR stated.
(With PTI inputs)
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