Five men were arrested in Greater Noida on Thursday for allegedly duping “hundreds of people” on the pretext of providing credit card offers, the police said.
The police have recovered 50 SIM cards and 17 mobile phones from the possession of the accused and are investigating the exact amount of fraud and number of people conned by them, a senior police officer said.
“A complaint was received at the Surajpur police station on Wednesday from a local who alleged he was tricked into sharing the OTP number for online transactions done illegally through his credit card by one of the accused, Senior Superintendent of Police, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Vaibhav Krishna said.
“An investigation was taken up immediately and the accused were tracked down. It appeared that he was not working alone. The police suspected that he was part of a fake call centre-like set-up,” Mr. Krishna told reporters.
The police caught four more of his partners at the instance of Ajay, the key accused. They were working together as a gang, the police said.
“The gang has been operating in the region for about eight months,” the SSP said.
Those arrested accused have been identified as Ajay, Rohit, Abhay, Irshad and Kishore, all of them from Ghaziabad district, the police said. An FIR was registered in the case. The accused were booked under IPC Section 420 (fraud), among others, and under the IT Act.
