Cyber Crime
3 Jamtara Cyber Criminal Arrested For Cheating 4.38 Lakh People In 20 States
BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Police Crime Branch has arrested three gang members from Jamtara, Jharkhand, who used to cheat citizens by collecting their bank details in the pretext of upgrading their KYC (Know Your Customer).
The trio was arrested for scamming about 4.38 lakh people in 20 states, with at least 171 complaints made against them. Investigators stormed a residence in Rasulgarh on a tip and arrested Pradhum Kumar Mandal (20), Krishna Kumar Mandal (19), all from Giridih district, and Chetlal Mandal (28) from Dhanbad district. The trio and their accomplices called around 4.38 lakh people across the country, including Odisha.
The accused admitted to impersonating bank personnel and making phone calls to people around the country. They used to call the victims under the guise of upgrading their KYC and collecting their personal information.
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The Crime Branch seized 11 mobile phones, including an iPhone, two laptops, a tablet, two debit cards, and other incriminating items from them.
According to reports, the Crime Branch, which has been investigating the gang’s cyber-crime cases for nearly two years, made a breakthrough after neighbours flagged about their lavish lifestyle. Despite being uneducated they had rented the top floor of a building at a premium expense since December 2021. The neighbours were perplexed because they had never seen them out during normal business hours. Suspecting anything shady about their source of money, the neighbours reported the trio’s gay activities to the city police.
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The gang has grown its network in Odisha’s capital, hoodwinking individuals across the country through UPI, credit card, and other frauds.
Two of them are from the Jharkhand region of Giridihi, and the other is from the Dhanbad region. Pradhun Kumar Mandal (20), Krishna Kumar Mandal (19), and Chet Lal Mandal have been identified (28).
Sanjeeb Panda, ADG of the Crime Branch said that the three accused had been living together on rent in the Rasulgarh district of Bhubaneswar from December 28, 2021 and were functioning from there.
They declared themselves to be students and rented the house. They bought a list of phone numbers from shady sources and used pre-activated SIM cards to change their phones and numbers to avoid being tracked.
The con artists would obtain a list of phone numbers from questionable sources and call the people, posing as bank officials. They would then inform their targets that they must update their KYC in the provided links or their banking services will be terminated.
The cyber crooks would obtain all of the financial details if individuals responded and filled in the bank details in the URLs sent to them by the fraudsters. They would then contact the unsuspecting clients to obtain the one-time passwords (OTPs). The spammers would utilise the bank details obtained from the targets to transfer money from the account to other digital payment providers. They then used the money to buy gift cards, which they then redeemed for pricey things on online shopping platforms.
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