New Delhi: In a major crackdown on online fraud, Delhi Police busted a syndicate, based in Jharkhand's Jamtara, which was involved in defrauding gullible bank customers by pretending to be staff of a prominent bank.
According to reports, the Delhi Police arrested at least six of its members and also recovered around 22,000 SIM cards. The official said that a total of 21,761 used and unused SIM cards were recovered from the possession of the accused.
The accused were identified as Nizamudin Ansari (23), Afroz Alam (23), Md Amir Ansari (22), Sarfaraz Ansari (22), Afroz Ansari (22), all residents of Jamtara, and Nasim Malitya (31), a resident of West Bengal's Murshidabad. The action came following a complaint by a man from whose account Rs 10 lakh was fraudulently withdrawn.
ALSO READ: Cybercrimes: India registers over 16 lakh cases of online fraud in past three years
How a bank customer was cheated?
According to police, the complainant, presently residing in Dubai, has come to Delhi to visit his daughter studying in the Delhi Technological University and wanted to get her bank passbook updated. For this, he searched for a customer care number online.
"He called that number searched on Google.The person who attended the call talked in a professional manner and convinced/induced the complainant to download an application 'SBI Anydesk' from the Play Store for further assistance and also sent the link via WhatsApp posing as SBI customer care personnel," Deputy Commissioner of Police, Outer North, Ravi Kumar Singh, said
"Then the fraudster asked log on to his net banking account. These persons then forward the call to another person pretending to be a senior executive and remotely got access to his mobile phone and made two unauthorised transactions of Rs 9,50,000 and Rs 50,000 from the SBI account," he said.
During the investigation, the call details record of the phone numbers sought, the money trail was probed and details from SBI and Billdesk payment gateway were taken on record.
Fraudsters used call forwarding method
"On analysis it was found that these persons used the call forwarding method along with frequently changing the Google webpage customer phone numbers in order to hide their locations. The phone numbers and IMEI were analysed in a broader perspective and it has been noticed that these persons are doing online cyber fraud in an organised and professional manner on a pan-India basis," the DCP said.
Based on surveillance and technical leads, the Delhi Police team on April 11 conducted a raid at a village Nawadih in Jamtara along with a team of Jharkhand Police. Explaining the modus operandi of the syndicate, the DCP said that these cybercriminals were operating in a very clandestine manner under a criminal conspiracy.
They were operating under a deadly combination of preactivated SIM card supplier from Regi Nagar in Murshidabad to go undetected by agencies during the cyber trail as the SIM subscriber never knows that it is being used by the cyber crooks in Jamtara, he added.
(With IANS inputs)
