Last month, a four-member gang claiming to be personal assistants to Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu had called up a few MLAs in North Andhra seeking money for their respective ‘party funds’. The MLAs were only too happy to oblige.
Using this modus operandi, the four persons — all youngsters — managed to collect about ₹15 lakh. Eventually, however, they were arrested by the Visakhapatnam Cybercrime Police after complaints were lodged by the victims.
This case had sent ripples across the two Telugu States as it brought into focus the growing trend of youths, especially software engineers, attempting to foray into the murky world of cybercrime using their knowledge of computers, hacking and the dark web.
Lengthy process
The cybercrime police explained the lengths to which the youths had gone to cheat the MLAs.
“The miscreants first found out the phone number of the person who they wanted to impersonate, in this case the CM’s personal assistant. They then took the help of apps available on the dark web to mask their caller id with the PA’s phone number. Once this was done, they called up the MLAs, who answered the phone believing that it is the Chief Minister’s PA on the other side,” police officials said.
“Masking of the phone number is the first step. The next step is to make your voice sound the same as the person you are impersonating,” a police official said. Even this is made possible through hacking apps on the dark web, but the ruse will last only for short phone calls, police explained.
“After successfully masking their phone number and cloaking their voices, the miscreants called up the MLAs and asked them to check their WhatsApp. They then sent messages to them through fake WhatsApp profiles that looked similar to the PA’s,” police explained.
“In the messages, they would ask for money transfers, saying it is urgent and that the CM would call them back in the evening as he was busy in a meeting,” the police said.
“In this case, the miscreants took the help of hackers on the dark web in order to get the phone numbers of the CM’s personal assistant. The hackers provided details of the PA’s phone number, and also gave the miscreants spoofed voice samples of the PA,” said V. Gopinath, Inspector of Cybercrime Police Station, Visakhapatnam.
Tasking probe
It took over two months to crack the case, police said.
Collecting about 7.50 lakh IP addresses, police narrowed down the list to 7,000 addresses and finally zeroed in on the four miscreants and arrested them after almost 70 days, Mr. Gopinath said.
According to a senior police officer from Visakhapatnam city, early detection of such cases is highly impossible, even though the police have advanced technical equipment.
“All we can do is to ask the public to be constantly on the alert regarding scammers. One can impersonate anyone over the phone by masking their phone number. We do not know how many fradusters are using the dark web at present to collect confidential data. This is beyond our control. Without cross-checking, one should not go for any financial transaction”, said the police officer, requesting anonymity.
