3 telecallers held for duping people

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 9

With the arrest of three fraudsters, all in their mid-twenties, the Chandigarh Police claim to have busted a gang of telecallers who used to dupe gullible people by calling them up posing as bank executives and seeking information about their ATM cards. The accused then used to withdraw money after transferring it into bank accounts opened on fake identities.

The accused have been identified as Ashish Mehta (mastermind), Vansh Arora and Ravi Sharma, all residents of Delhi.

The cyber crime investigation cell of the UT police had received a complaint from Harjeet Singh of Sector 22, who had claimed that he was duped of Rs 23,580 on November 5, 2015. The victim had received a call from one of the accused, who claimed that he was calling from the customer care service of ICICI Bank and took the details of the credit card on the pretext of blocking it.

The victim later found that online transactions had been made using his credit card on different merchant sites such as paytm.com, mobikwik.com, payu.com and oxigen.com by making fake money wallets.

Sukhchain Singh Gill, UT SSP, said during the investigation, it was found that the accused used to “siphon off the victims’ hard-earned money into fake bank accounts” through merchant sites.

The police have recovered around 15 SIM cards procured on fake identities, a walky-talky set and data of debit and credit card holders.