How Dubai bank staffer connected cyber crime operatives in Mumbai, Pune to international masterminds

The fraud and the initial leads

The newly established cyber crime police station of Pimpri Chinchwad police was investigating a case in which a businessman from Rahatani area was duped of Rs 99 lakh in an online share trading fraud.

The complainant, a senior citizen, was manipulated into downloading an application after he was added to a WhatsApp group. He was made to make investments per day and promised upto 300 per cent profit and the applications displayed profits accordingly. As the complainant tried to make withdrawals from his ‘profits’, more money was sought from him. After realising that he was being cheated, he approached the police.

The investigation team got a hit of one of the accounts used to receive the money. When the police questioned the account holder from Mumbai, he revealed that his maternal uncle Mahadev Katke from Navi Mumbai had asked him to open the account and it was Katke who was operating it.

From used car dealer to Dubai bank staffer

Questioning of Katke, a used car dealer, revealed that he was further passing on the control of the mule bank accounts to two more men — one from Mumbai and another from Pune. It was at this point that the investigators realised that they were looking for an organised racket with international links and footprints in Pune and Mumbai.

Between November 10 and 13, a team from the cyber crime police station arrested a total of eight people—Katke (44) from Kamothe and Masood Alam Siddique (48) from Jogeshwari in Mumbai, both second hand car dealers, Mohammd Afzal Salmani (49) from Goregaon West, who ran a salon and also made failed attempts at producing Kannada films, Tausaif Sayyed (40) from Malad East, who is a property broker, Sagar Bhosale (38) of Indapur in Pune, whose father is a retired cop, Imran Sayyed (44) from Kalwa in Thane, Pranav Dalvi (30) from Borivali East, a software professional who works for a blockchain firm and Danish Sathi (24) from Mumbra, who works for a bank in Dubai for last couple of years and had come on live when he was arrested.

The racket unravels

Probe revealed that Sathi came in contact with Chinese cyber criminals and was the final link with operatives in India. He was in contact with all the others arrested and was receiving all the funds siphoned from victims into various bank accounts. He was the one who channeled the money to international cyber criminals via cryptocurrency.

Dalvi, on the other hand, was in contact with some more operatives from Hong Kong and also performed similar tasks. All the other suspects mainly recruited mule account holders from among their own relatives and acquaintances and managed them. The account holders received commissions in return of total control of account operation.

The probe was led by DCP Crime Sandeep Doiphone and ACP Vishal Hire and the investigation team comprised inspector Ravikiran Nale, assistant inspector Praveen Swami and sub inspectors Sagar Poman, Vaibhav Patil and Prakash Katkade.

As per the latest figures available of cases registered with the cyber crime police station of Pune city and Pimpri Chinchwad, around 510 people have lost a staggering Rs 170 crores in online share trading frauds as of mid October.