THE CHANDIGARH Police on Tuesday busted a gang allegedly involved in online frauds by arresting its three members. All the three are well-qualified young men who had allegedly been running a fake customer care centre in Delhi — a platform used by the accused to pose as verification agents of banks. They used to allegedly steal the database of bank account holders from the unauthorised online shopping websites and then identify their targets.
The accused were identified as Vansh Arora, Ashish Mehta and Ravi Sharma, residents of Sector 17, Rohini, New Delhi. In their mid-20s, the accused used to make fake verification calls to people posing as staffers of a customer care centre to get the details of their debit and credit cards.
[related-post]
Disclosing the modus operandi of the accused, the SSP said that the accused used to call the debit and credit card holders on the pretext of solving various technical problems related to the cards or telling them that their cards could be blocked if they did not share their details.
“By way of these fake verification calls, the accused used to ask people to share their personal details like PIN numbers, Card Verification Value (CVV) numbers or other details related to the cards. Using the same modus operandi, they cheated over two dozen persons in the last one month. One of their victims was from Chandigarh,” UT SSP Sukhchain Singh Gill told mediapersons.
“After making the call to the card holders across the country on the pretext of providing them double PIN security or issuing a new debit/credit card to them, they would ask the details like date of birth, card expiry date and CVV code, and use these details to swipe online on the fake wallets on platforms like Oxigen, Mobikwik, Paytm, CCavenue, Payu, and transfer the same into the bogus bank account and recharge their fake SIM cards,” the SSP added.
One of the accused, Ravi Sharma, holds an MSc degree. However, the police said that they were yet to verify if the degree was genuine.
In November last year, the Chandigarh Police had registered a case against unidentified persons on a complaint lodged by Sector 22 resident Harjeet Singh, who alleged that he was duped. While investigating the case, the Cyber Cell of Chandigarh Police tracked down the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the accused, conducted raids at a few places and nabbed them.
Harjit in his complaint to the police had alleged that he got calls from a customer care centre of ICICI bank and the caller took his credit card details. Later, he found that online transactions to the tune of Rs 23,800 were made by using his credit card on different platforms like Paytm.com, Mobikwik.com, Payu.com and Oxigen.com.
“As of now we have solved only one case but there is a possibility that more people may come forward with complaints, especially because we have arrested the fraudsters,” the SSP added.
The police recovered 15 SIM cards, walky-talky sets and data of many debit and credit card holders from the possession of the accused. The police officials urged people not to give their details to those posing as bank employees or any agents.
The accused at Sector 17 Police Station in Chandigarh on Tuesday. Sahil Walia
Share
