Nashik rickshaw driver’s bank account leads police to bust gang of cyber criminals with international links

The investigation had started from a case in which a woman software engineer from Wakad was cheated of Rs 12 lakh in a ‘drugs in parcel’ scam by cyber criminals posing as courier company executives and narcotics department officers. She was threatened with arrest saying drugs had been found in a parcel sent by her and she was forced to shell out money on the pretext of giving her ‘clearance certificate.’

As the cyber police began a probe, they came across a bank account registered in Nashik which had received close to Rs 2.5 lakh from the funds siphoned off in this case. A police team went to Nashik and found that the account was in the name of a rickshaw driver struggling to make two ends meet.

Probe revealed a man who had come to meet the rickshaw driver in a black SUV had offered him Rs 10,000 for letting him operate the bank account. The police team tracked movements of the black Scorpio SUV and found that it was used by some people from Rajasthan who had been living in Undri area for the last few days.

Police subsequently arrested Mohammed Iliyas Mohammed Sadik Kalal (36), who hails from Sikar in Rajasthan, Mohammed Shahid Mohammed Ali (25) from Jodhpur, Puran Singh Ratan Singh (24) from Jodhpur and Nazil Khatri Anwarali Khatri (29) from Jodhpur. All four had been living in Undri in Pune from the last few days and were conducting the operations of their cyber crime gang from here. Police have recovered 18 cell phones, 90 SIM cards, 60 bank passbooks, 60 debit cards, 15 Aadhar cards from them, along with two SUVs.

Probe revealed that Kalal was the one who was moving around spotting mule account holders and was paying them small commissions to use their bank accounts to receive funds siphoned from the victims of cyber crimes.

Shahid and Singh were operating a web of over 300 bank accounts, which received funds to the tune of several crores and have been flagged in dozens of cyber frauds across India.

Khatri was handling the task of converting this money into the Tether cryptocurrency and sending it to the wallets of international masterminds. A court in Pimpri Chinchwad send the four accused to police custody.

In April this year, in a crackdown against a group of alleged cyber foot soldiers, the Pimpri Chinchwad police had arrested five young men in their 20s who worked as delivery boys and operated a network of 120 bank accounts which had been receiving funds from cyber frauds. These suspects also facilitated purchase of cryptocurrency to be sent to the wallets of their international masterminds for a meagre cut. The probe had revealed that these 120 accounts had together seen transactions of close to Rs 15 crores and had been flagged in at least 75 different cyber crime cases reported across the country.

An advisory issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in May warned citizens regarding intimidation, blackmail, extortion and “digital arrests” by cyber criminals posing as police authorities, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), narcotics department, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Enforcement Directorate and other law enforcement agencies.