The Cyber Cell has busted an inter-State gang involved in online fraud and arrested four persons, including one of the biggest masterminds of online frauds, the police said on Thursday.
The accused, who were arrested from Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand, have been identified as Surendra Singh, Shabir Ali, Purnananda Kumar Tiwari alias Mukesh and Ram Kumar Mandal alias Sitaram Mandal.
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Naxalite links
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The gang had Naxalite links and its kingpin was Mandal, who had cheated several people and accumulated ₹1 crore in just five months, the police said.
Mandal is allegedly wanted by the police in nearly two dozen States. Mandal, who is known as the “hello master”, was not just involved in online frauds but also trained hundreds of youngsters.
He had also opened a school in Jharkhand’s Jamtara and the gang was known by the name of the place.
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The four accused ran an online fraud racket that had duped people after acquiring their bank account details.
The police have also seized a number of laptops and mobile phones allegedly used in the crime, ₹75,000 and several cheque books, among other items, from the accused.
Woman files complaint
The police said a complaint was received from a woman in March this year at Anand Vihar police station about an online transaction fraud.
“The woman alleged that somebody had called her pretending to be an official from the Reserve Bank of India and asked for bank account and debit card details, including a one-time password, to link them with her Aadhaar Card. Shortly after she shared all these details, ₹1.85 lakh was siphoned off from two of her bank accounts”, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) Nupur Prasad.
A case was registered at Anand Vihar police station and later was transferred to the Cyber Cell, Shahdara district, for investigation.
The investigating team found that the money was transferred to several e-wallets, from which it was used to pay several electricity bills against Jodhpur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited from a privately-owned eMitra counter. The police then arrested counter owner Surendra, who revealed the modus operandi of the gang and the names of his associates.
Surendra also told the police that he would collect bill amounts in cash from electricity consumers and then distribute the money among the gang members.
“The gang leader, Mandal, would then share the details of the e-wallets with Tiwari and he would accordingly pay electricity bills from the e-wallets. On the one hand, the gang was illegally acquiring all the cash from consumers and on the other they were converting stolen money accumulated in the e-wallets into white by paying electricity bills,” said a police officer.
The police traced Ali in Bikaner in Rajasthan and arrested him. They also came to know that Tiwari was operating from the Bihar-Jharkhand border with the help of some Naxalites active in the area.
After weeks of sustained efforts, a police team arrested Tiwari from the Naxal-hit Jamui district in Bihar. They arrested Mandal from the Jamtara district in Jharkhand. They seized several electronic devices and cash.
“During interrogation, we found that the accused were using 20 different bank accounts. Two of them were involved in similar cases in the past. Details of their accounts show that this year they had gathered around ₹1 crore in just five months. The details of the previous years are yet to be fetched. We immediately froze all the bank accounts and are now interrogating them further for other possible links of the racket,” the police officer added.