2 cyber fraud gangs busted, 6 held

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 19

In a coordinated operation, Punjab Police have busted two gangs of inter-state cyber scamsters and arrested six persons for defrauding a large number of customers of their money by impersonating as bank officials.

The police have recovered Rs 8.85 lakh in cash, 11 mobile phones, nine phone handsets and 100 SIM cards from their possession.

According to DGP Dinkar Gupta, while one gang with four members was operating from Delhi, the other two arrested were working for a Jamtara-based gang active in Ludhiana. Jamtara in Jharkhand is notorious for online scams.

Gupta said the six were active in the region and with their arrest four cases had been solved so far.

The DGP said the operation was carried out by a joint team of the Cyber Cell and CIA, supervised by Sangrur SSP Sandeep Garg.

The kingpin of the Delhi gang, Mohd Farid, a resident of Chanakya Place in west Delhi, was running a call centre — Platinum Vacations Pvt. Ltd. — in the Pankha Road area. His operations were kept under a watch and a raid on the centre led to the recovery of Rs 1.2 lakh in cash, seven mobiles, nine landline handsets and 90 SIM cards.

Gupta said preliminary investigations suggested the accused were targeting HDFC Bank accountholders by impersonating as bank officials.

They used to take personal bank-related information from victims on the pretext that their debit/credit card was expiring due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

After obtaining the details and relevant OTPs sent on their mobile phones, the suspects used to transfer money from the accounts of unsuspecting victims to their own fictitious Paytm accounts, said Gupta.

He said the investigating team had also arrested some persons who were being used to operate these fake Paytm accounts.

Box

Targeted HDFC clients

* The accused would target HDFC Bank accountholders by impersonating as bank officials

* They used to take victims’ account info claiming their debit/credit card was about to expire

* They then transferred money from victims’ accounts to own fictitious Paytm accounts, said the DGP