Know How Cyber Criminals Are Calling You From Fake SIM Card: 7 Arrested by Ludhiana Police

By Shambhavi Singh: Ever thought how cybercriminals manage to get SIM cards with which they commit financial frauds.

Latest investigation has revealed that there are active gangs which are in the illicit business of stealing printout or photocopy of identification documents like passport, PAN, driving license, Aadhar etc. These gangs misuse these documents to get new SIM and with this starts a web of pan India scams.

Beware! Your personal documents are being used by criminals. The revelation was made by the Ludhiana police, which recently busted a gang of cybercriminals which bough PAN and Aadhar cards of common people for Rs 100.

These identity proofs were further used to obtain multiple SIM cards and open multiple bank accounts especially ICICI bank, police said.  The matter came to fore after people started getting notices from the banks and finance companies for clearing the loans.

The gangs have also duped online apps like Dhani, Red Carpet, Ola, Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato and Swiggy. A courier boy from Bluedart was also involved in the forgery who helped the gang by delivering debit and credit cards at fake addresses for a commission of Rs 100 on each delivery.

“This gang also provided genuine Aadhaar and PAN cards to other cybercriminals for online frauds and helped them in opening bank accounts using these ID proofs. These documents were also used to avail loans online, as there are some mobile applications like Dhani and Red Carpet that gives loans without verification. By getting new SIM cards, they managed to get several cashback on different mobile applications,” said a senior police officer.

The accused had been active for the past year, during which they created more than 100 bank accounts to deposit ill-gotten money. Further enquiry is going on in order to find whether a bank official is involved or not.

The gang committed different crimes using these details and further sold these bank accounts, debit cards and SIM cards to cybercriminals of different states.

Police said that the accused were aware that the instant accounts of some banks can be opened easily without physical verification. “They needed bank accounts to deposit the money, so they used this technique. In Punjab, they used to get the bank accounts opened with the IDs of people belonging to UP, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Uttarakhand. Similarly, IDs of Punjab people were sold to the cyber fraudsters of other states,” the officer said.

Those arrested have been identified as Vijay Kumar Bittu of Krishna Nagar, Anshuman Singh of Lakshmi Nagar, Sushil Kumar Patel of Mahadev Nagar, Sooraj of Makkar Colony, Sanjay Kumar of Prem Nagar, Rohit of Bhora Colony and Ram Narayan of Lakshmi Nagar. The police have recovered Rs 5.45 lakh, 11 mobile phones, three credit cards, 17 SIM cards, two laptops, one scanner, one coloured printer, 45 PAN cards, six memory cards and 11 debit cards from their possession

All these accused either worked at mobile stores or are distributors of SIM cards, so they were aware of the system. When customers came to them for getting a new SIM card, they kept details of their Aadhaar and PAN cards. The gang leader is at large and police are trying to trace him. He was training some youngsters for these frauds.