Haryana cops unearth pan-India cyber fraud in which 28,000 scammed of Rs 100 crore

On the intervening night of April 27-28, 102 teams of 5,000 policemen simultaneously raided 320 locations in 14 villages in Nuh and detained around 125 suspected hackers. Out of these, 66 accused were identified and arrested. All were produced in respective courts and taken on remand for 7 to 11 days, said Singla.

During the raids, 166 fake Aadhaar cards, five PAN cards, 128 ATM cards, 66 mobile phones, 99 SIM cards, five POS machines and three laptops were recovered, he added.

The mobile phones and SIM cards seized during the raid were technically examined and relevant details were also sought from banks, National Payments Corporation of India, UPI intermediaries, UIDAI, Department of Telecommunications, social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp etc, police said.

The assistance of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs was also sought to provide the linkages of the fake bank accounts, SIM cards, mobile phones etc. used by these scammers with the cybercrime complaints received nationwide.

It came to fore that at least 1,346 FIRs have been registered against these cyber fraudsters across the country. The details of the arrested accused are now being sent to police officials in several states.
According to Singla, the accused are 18-35 years old and worked in groups of three or four. A handful of accused in a village was involved in creating fake bank accounts, fake SIM cards, posting ads on social media websites etc and charged 5 per cent to 50 per cent of the fraud amount as their commission fee, he added. “They mainly used Common Service Centres for cash withdrawal while some others used ATMs in different villages,” Singla said.

The police investigation also revealed that about 219 private and public sector bank accounts and 140 UPI accounts were being used to commit cyber fraud. “These bank accounts were mainly found to be activated online by defrauding gullible people on the pretext of providing a job and then taking their credentials such as Aadhaar card, PAN card, mobile number,” Singla said.

Apart from this, 347 SIM cards activated from Haryana, West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, North East, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka circles of telecom companies have also been unearthed which were being used by these scammers for cybercrime. During the investigation, the source of the fake SIMs and bank accounts has been found to be mainly linked to district Rajasthan’s Bharatpur, he said.

To unearth the entire nexus, Haryana Director General of Police P K Agrawal deployed a team of 40 cyber experts to be closely associated with the interrogation of the accused, Singla said. “Sustained interrogation of the cyber criminals was thus carried out and details regarding the modus operandi…as well as detailed information about sources of fake SIMs and bank accounts were obtained,” Singla added.
Singla said that in 16 cases registered in Nuh district, 250 wanted cyber criminals working as co-accused to the scammers apprehended have also been identified, out of which 20 are from Rajasthan, 19 from Uttar Pradesh and 211 from Haryana.

The modus operandi

Nuh SP Varun Singla said the scammers used to commit the fraud by luring the victims with attractive offers of sale on products like bikes, cars, mobile phones etc. by posting advertisements on Facebook or OLX.

“The unsuspecting victim then calls on the given mobile number and the scammer then cheats the victim on the pretext of courier charges, transportation of product etc but the product never gets “delivered,” he said.

These fraudsters also used to post advertisements on social media platforms offering work-from-home opportunities, mainly related to packaging of pencils, promising an earning of Rs 30,000 per month and duping people on the pretext of registration fees, packing materials, courier charges etc,” Singla said.

The accused also checked random number series in UPI apps to get the names of victims registered against those numbers on those apps. They would then impersonate some friend/relative of the victims and request them to receive payment on their behalf, the police said. “They then used to send fake payment messages and get the real money transferred to their accounts before the victim found something amiss. Similarly, on the pretext of buying old coins, gullible people were duped of huge sums of money,” Singla added.

These fraudsters also used to post advertisements on social media platforms offering work-from-home opportunities, mainly related to packaging of pencils, promising an earning of Rs 30,000 per month and duping people on the pretext of registration fees, packing materials, courier charges etc.

The cybercriminals were also duping victims through sextortion by creating fake profiles on social media platforms and luring the victims to come on a video call where they carry out screen recordings of the victims in compromising positions and then extort huge sums of money from them, Singla said.