Ten members of Deoghar gang held by Rachakonda police

The accused used to indulge in cyber crimes

Ten members of Deoghar gang from Jharkhand were arrested by Rachakonda cyber crime police for their involvement in various cases.

The accused are Jameel Ansari (26) from Margomunda, Barzahan Ansari (32) from Kasmatand, Jamtara, Akhlak Hussain (27) from Margomunda in Deoghar and seven others.

Police said that the accused formed a gang and used to exchange knowledge and techniques to commit cyber frauds to make a quick buck. They purchase SIMs from different sources, from different places, and post the mobile numbers as “customer care numbers” of G-Pay, PhonePe, and various e-commerce shopping sites, banks, online services etc, on Google.

“If any customer contacted the said phone numbers by searching on Google to get their issues resolved, this is where the accused persons impersonate as customer care representatives of the service providers, and to refund their amount/solve their problem and siphon of the victims' money, they used to tell the victims that there is a cashback offer and send them notifications and confirm their (victims) PhonePe/G-pay/Paytm numbers,” they said.

Later, they instruct the customers and make them open new G-pay, Phonepe, Paytm apps in their mobile phones and insist they enter their bank details, UPI PIN details etc. and fraudulently transfer their (victims) amounts from their respective bank accounts and cheat them.

“They also force the victims to install apps such as Team viewer, Quick Support, AnyDesk in their mobile phones and tactically gain the remote access to their mobile phones and transfer huge amounts into their bank accounts which are procured fraudulently and in turn transfer again into e-commerce wallets/Paytm accounts, and shared money among them,” the officer said.

They said that the accused were also involved in impersonation of bank employees, inducing people to download remote access apps, creating fake websites on popular e-commerce platforms and making them visible to potential victims using Google Ads and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), targeting people to make UPI transaction fraudulently in the name of benefits from government welfare schemes and others.