Cops arrest six individuals from Jamtara in Jharkhand. They ran a cyber-crime racket of defrauding people of crores of rupees.
NEW DELHI: At a time and age when digital penetration in India is increasing, cyber criminals are devising newer means and using the opportunity to rob people of their hard earned money. This time, the Delhi police has once again busted a Jamtara module of the cyber criminals who defrauded thousands of people after posing as representatives from banks and popular online shopping applications like Amazon, Flipkart and Mesho.
Earlier last week, the Delhi police arrested at least six individuals, all between 20 to 25 years of age, from Jamtara in Jharkhand. They ran a cyber-crime racket of defrauding people of crores of rupees.
According to the Delhi police, these cyber crooks posted their mobile numbers on Google as the official customer care number of several banks like that of SBI and other online shopping applications and used strong SEO to rank these numbers on the top search of Google, making individuals believe that these numbers posted by the fraudsters were the original customer care numbers of the said businesses or banks.
“Once any person searches for the customer care number of these banks or online shopping sites, the numbers of the fraudsters would pop up on the top searches, making the innocent individual believe it to be true. Once contacted on these numbers, the person on other side used to pose as a customer care official of that bank or online shopping site and talk in a professional manner. Then, after convincing them, the person would get them on screen sharing or mirroring apps like Any Desk by adding the bank name first i.e., SBI.ANY DESK,” the Delhi police said.
“Once they installed the app and got on it, they would take control of their mobile or computer and ask them to open net banking, thereby stealing all the information from the affected individual,” the Delhi police further said. Delhi police also found during the investigation that each of the fraudsters used to carry three to four mobile phones with them and at the time of calling, they would do it from a remote location in the Nawadih, Karmatar village in Jamtara, because accessing the forests in this place was difficult even for the local police and would help them escape in case of a police raid.
The five individuals arrested from Jamtara include Nijamudin Ansari (23 years), Afroj Alam (23 years), Md Amir Ansari (22 years), Sarfaraj Ansari (22 years) Afroj Ansari (21 years) and cases under Section 420 of the IPC have been registered against them.
The arrest of these five individuals have also led the police to Murshidabad in West Bengal from where the Delhi police said the fraudsters would procure their SIM cards. According to the Delhi police investigation, one of the accused, Nizamuddin led police to Nasim Malitya, a resident of Murshidabad, who was supplying activated SIM cards to these crooks for a heavy sum of money.“It has been revealed that SIM cards to Jamtara cyber crooks were supplied after activation from Regi Nagar in Murshidabad and in one single mobile phone, more than 300 SIMs were activated in a day. We conducted raids at the house of Malitya and 21761 SIM cards and 9 mobile phones were recovered from his house. Further, trail of IMSI number of these SIM cards is being done to ascertain the use of these numbers in cyber fraud,” Ravi Kumar Singh, DCP, Outer North District said.
Delhi Police officials investigating the case said that it took them more than four hours to count the number of recovered SIM cards and that many of the SIM cards were international numbers from countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
The case came to light after a complaint was received by the Delhi Police from an individual who had come from Dubai to visit his daughter studying at the Delhi Technological University and wanted to get the passbook of her daughter updated and searched for customer care number on Google.
“He called the number, 9339099*** that claimed to be the customer care number of the bank. The person who attended the call spoke in a professional manner and convinced the complainant to download an application “SBI ANYDESK” for further assistance from the Play Store. The fraudster also sent the link via WhatsApp posing as SBI Customer Care Personnel. Thereafter, he asked to share his location; he said that now everything is online in Digital India. Then the fraudster asked him to open his net banking. These persons forwarded the call to a person pretending to be a senior executive and remotely got access of the mobile phone and made two unauthorized transactions of Rs 9,50000 and Rs 50,000 respectively from the SBI Bank account,” the Delhi police said.
Delhi police officials say that the arrest of these six individuals would also lead the Delhi police to solve several cyber-crime complaints in the city.