Jamtara scamsters are back, this time with fake toll-free customer care number

With the arrest of six persons, Delhi Police claims to have busted an online cyber phishing gang running from Jharkhand’s infamous Jamtara area.

The gang used to siphon off money from victims’ accounts after getting their registered phone number and bank details.

The gang made had a unique modus-operandi they had registered fake toll-free customer care number of all the banks, payment wallets in Google phone listing.

When people searched for toll-free number on the web they landed upon fake number floated by scamsters. When a customer dials they get no response, but they received a call from some other number from someone posing as a bank executive and asking the victim to click on the link sent on his phone. The moment the link was clicked, a huge amount was withdrawn from the account of the victim.

Delhi Police started investigating the case and sought all phoney call centre and PayTM numbers in the investigation. Around hundreds of mobile phone numbers were found to be running in these devices.

Apparently, no calls were made on these numbers, but only some messages were reflecting. These findings further intrigued the investigators, as the crime appeared to be well-knit and part of some vicious nexus running pan India. Hundreds of accounts and mobile numbers were used to deliberately mislead the investigators.

The details of bank accounts in which money was transferred were obtained which started revealing important mobile numbers which were recharged through these bank accounts.

One mobile number surfaced and its details reflected that this person had travelled to Delhi and Gurugram in the month of June, 2020. Its Delhi based contacts were examined and a mobile number in the name of Nasim Ansari was traced whose mobile was registered in Jamtara, Jharkhand. On August 21, he was nabbed by the police.

On interrogation, he coughed up names of his associates.

“We found 15 ATM cards in possession of the accused. He disclosed that he had procured these ATM cards from one Narayan, a resident of Sohana, Haryana for Rs 5,000 each. We also recovered a swipe machine and a fingerprint scanner from the accused. During further interrogation, Nasim disclosed that he supplied these accounts to other people namely Iqbal and Sagir Ansari, both residents of Jamtara, Jharkhand. Iqbal was also arrested as per inputs by Nasim,” said a police official.

In total, six men were arrested by Delhi Police and a total of 25 ATM cards, Rs 1,78,500 and one cheque book with three blank cheques were recovered from their possession.