How 2,500 people were duped by 6 men in Jamtara posing as customer care officials
Police said that the accused were posing as customer care of many reputed banks and online shopping sites on Google. Officials said that they recovered 12,500 pre-activated SIM cards provided to fraudsters in Jamtara from Murshidabad for over a year.
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Establishments which share mobile numbers of customers without their knowledge with third parties can face criminal action under the Information Technology Act, 2000, which include three years of imprisonment and fine upto Rs 5 lakh, it said. (Representational/File) The Delhi Police has arrested six persons from Jharkhand’s Jamtara for allegedly duping more than 2,500 persons from across the country of money worth over Rs 1 crore through a purported customer care centre, police said. The accused allegedly used mirroring applications to get access to registered mobile numbers of victims to siphon off money, officers said.
Police said that the accused were posing as customer care of many reputed banks and online shopping sites on Google. Officials said that they recovered 12,500 pre-activated SIM cards provided to fraudsters in Jamtara from Murshidabad for over a year.
DCP (Outer North) Ravi Kumar Singh said that the case came to the fore after a Dubai-based complainant came to Delhi to visit his daughter. For updating his daughter’s bank passbook, he searched for the customer care number on Google. “He called the said number and talked to a person who convinced the complainant to download an application ‘SBI ANYDESK’ for further assistance by sending the link through WhatsApp and posing as SBI customer care personnel,” said the DCP.
Said the officer: “His location was shared with the accused and the net banking page was opened. The accused forwarded the call to a person posing as a senior executive and remotely got access to the mobile phone and made two transactions of Rs 9,50,000 and Rs 50,000 from the account. A case of cheating was lodged and investigation was taken up.”
“It was found that the accused used the call forwarding method and kept changing Google web page customer phone numbers to hide their locations. The phone numbers and IMEI were analysed and it has been noticed that these persons were carrying out cyber fraud in an organised and professional manner on a pan India basis,” added the DCP.
On April 11, a raid was conducted at Nawadih village in Naya Tola in Jamtara, and the accused, Nijamudin Ansari (23), Afroj Alam (23), Sarfaraj Ansari (22), Afroj Ansari (22) Md Amir (22), and Nasim Malitya (31) were caught. As many as 25 mobile phones containing incriminating data and fraud SIM cards were seized.
Modus Operandi
The DCP said the accused would post their mobile numbers as customer care numbers of most of the banks; people searching for customer number of banks or online shopping sites would stumble upon the given numbers. “During the call, the accused would pose as customer care official. They would get a sharing or mirroring application installed in the victim’s device with the prefix coinciding with the bank name such as SBI ANYDESK, and once they got the application installed, they would siphon off the money,” he said. “A fraudster would keep three to four smart mobile phones and choose a remote place in Nawadih village…where police access is difficult,” added the DCP.
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