Jamtara-based fraud syndicate busted by Delhi Police, 21,000 SIM cards seized

New Delhi, April 19 (IANS) A syndicate, based in Jharkhand's Jamtara, defrauding gullible bank customers by pretending to be staff of a prominent bank has been busted by the Delhi Police with the arrest of six of its members and nearly 22,000 SIM cards recovered, a police official said on Wednesday.

The accused were identified as Nizamudin Ansari alias Nizam, 23, Afroz Alam, 23, Md Amir Ansari, 22, Sarfaraz Ansari, 22, Afroz Ansari, 22, all residents of Jamtara, and Nasim Malitya (31), a resident of West Bengal's Murshidabad.

The action came following a complaint by a man from whose account Rs 10 lakh was fraudulently withdrawn.

According to police, the complainant, presently residing at Dubai, has come to Delhi to visit his daughter studying in the Delhi Technological University and wanted to get her bank passbook updated. For this, he searched for customer care number online.

"He called that number searched on Google.The person who attended the call talked in a professional manner and convinced/induced the complainant to download an application 'SBI Anydesk' from the Play Store for further assistance and also sent the link via WhatsApp posing as SBI customer care personnel," Deputy Commissioner of Police, Outer North, Ravi Kumar Singh, said

"Then the fraudster asked log on to his net banking account. These persons then forward the call to another person pretending to be a senior executive and remotely got access to his mobile phone and made two unauthorised transactions of Rs 9,50,000 and Rs 50,000 from the SBI account," he said.

During investigation, the call details record of the phone numbers sought, money trail was probed and details from SBI and Billdesk payment gateway taken on record.

"On analysis it was found that these persons used the call forwarding method along with frequently changing the Google webpage customer phone numbers in order to hide their locations. The phone numbers and IMEI were analysed in a broader perspective and it has been noticed that these persons are doing online cyber fraud in an organised and professional manner on a pan-India basis," the DCP said.

Based on surveillance and technical leads, the Delhi Police team on April 11 conducted a raid at a village Nawadih in Jamtara along with a team of Jharkhand Police.

"Five people were nabbed and 25 mobile phones containing incriminating data and fraud SIM cards were also recovered. All the phone numbers matched with the analysis report," said the official.

During investigation, it was revealed that SIM cards were supplied to cyber crooks after activation from Murshidabad and in one single mobile phone, more than 300 SIMs were activated in a day.

"On technical leads and surveillance a raid was conducted at Heropara Natunpara Jhikra Murshidabad and Nasim was apprehended," said the official.

Explaining the modus operandi of the syndicate, the DCP said that these cyber criminals were operating in a very clandestine manner under a criminal conspiracy under a deadly combination of preactivated SIM card supplier from Regi Nagar in Murshidabad to go undetected by agencies during the cyber trail as the SIM subscriber never knows that it is being used by the cyber crooks in Jamtara.

The official said that a total of 21,761 used and unused SIM cards were recovered from the possession of the accused.

"Out of 10 lakhs cheated, an amount of Rs 9.73 lakh have been recovered while remaining Rs 27,000 is being also tracked," the DCP added.