Jharkhand gang that posed as bankers to con 500 busted, 4 held

Raj Shekhari, Times of India, September 28, 2017


The Crime Branch of Delhi Police has busted a gang that duped people in Delhi by posing as bank officials over the phone. Comprising six-seven men, the group operated from Jharkhand and is believed to have duped at least 500 people till now.


Four of the gang members have been arrested, while efforts are being made to nab the rest. Praveer Ranjan, joint commissioner (Crime), confirmed the arrests and said, "The gang operated across India from its headquarters in a Naxal-affected forest area in Jharkhand's Jamtara district."



The gang procured debit card and bank account details from bank officials and hackers in bulk and then targeted the victims individually. They would con the victims into sharing the one time password or the CVV numbers and use the information to transfer the funds into mobile wallets to be withdrawn later via ATMs.



Mohammed Salim alias Abdul Qarim, Varinder Singh, Major Singh and Abhishek Sharma, the men arrested, are all in their early 20s. "We recovered six mobile phones, five SIM cards, five ATM cards, a hard disk and a modem from them," said Bhisham Singh, DCP (Crime). "Investigation is at an early stage."



The Crime Branch got on the trail of the gang in July after a senior bureaucrat complained that he had received a call from the "bank manager" asked him for the OTP and he realised several transactions were conducted from his account. Singh affirmed, "We found that transactions of Rs 19,990, Rs 10,000, Rs 9,999, and Rs 9,990 were carried out to online wallets M-Pesa, PayU, Ola Money and Zip Cash."




ACP Sandeep Lamba was assigned to follow the money trail. His team discovered that the money was being routed through several wallets to throw the banks off and to obscure the identity of eventual beneficiary. However, as Singh explained, there were clues for the investigators. "The money deposited in the Ola Money wallets was transferred to the account of one Abdul Rahim in Rajasthan, whose ATM Card was recovered from his brother, Mohammed Salim," Singh said. Other leads, including through technical surveillance, led the cops to Punjab and Jharkhand.


A special team led by inspector Pawan Kumar conducted raids in four states. Three suspects were nabbed in Punjab and questioned thoroughly. They disclosed that their kingpin and other associates were in Jharkhand. Salim was arrested in a raid conducted by another team.




While the identity of other victims was being established, police are also trying to identify the bank employees who opened accounts for the gang members, provided them with customer data and helped them route money multiple times using CDMA machines issued by bank. More arrests are likely this week, the cops said.



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