NEW DELHI: In a primary of its form cash laundering case, a grievance lodged by an Irish girl in Dungarvan, a coastal city in Ireland, was taken up for investigation by Enforcement Directorate in India, triggering a sequence of searches throughout Bihar and West Bengal.

It resulted in busting of a syndicate of cyber criminals — principally faculty dropout desi boys talking accented British English — swindling folks in UK and Ireland by remotely taking management of their telephones and computer systems and transferring a number of crores of rupees from their financial institution accounts into their very own.

Searches in Patna and later in Kharagpur and Kolkata unearthed a 70-seater name centre operated by the crooks that had conned no less than 40 victims.

The Irish girl complained of receiving a name from one ‘Stephanie’ from Eircom Telecom, a broadband service supplier of her nation. Accused ‘Stephanie’, who turned out to be Nitesh Kumar, was working from a visitor home in Patna which was searched on Dec 18 final 12 months. He was apprehended earlier than he may leap out of the window of his room.


Searches at three places in Kolkata and one in Kharagpur on the premises of Sagar Yadav, the kingpin of syndicate, led to seizure of 5 laptops, 16 cell handsets, 56 credit score/debit playing cards and 69 financial institution accounts together with money of round Rs 2 crore. Officials later seized Rs 2.8 crore in financial institution accounts of the accused.

The probe additional revealed that two unlawful name centres had been being operated by Sagar Yadav in Kharagpur. During the searches, 70 computer systems with IP telephones and headphones had been recovered. The ED arrested three individuals within the case, together with Yadav and Kumar.

After taking management of the victims’ financial institution accounts on their telephone/pc remotely, the accused transferred proceeds of crime to the financial institution accounts of their international associates based mostly in UK/Ireland, who then withdrew these quantities and transferred the identical to India via Western Union and Moneygram platforms. After receiving the proceeds of crime within the Indian financial institution accounts, the identical was withdrawn in money.

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This is for the primary time that an FIR lodged abroad was used as a predicate offence by the central company to register a case beneath the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and seized ‘proceeds of crime’.

“The case falls under the category of offence of ‘cross-border implication’ under PMLA as it was committed in a foreign country and later the proceeds in the instant case were transferred to India,” a senior official conscious of the investigation revealed. The ED registered an ECIR, equal to a police FIR, in Oct 2023 and started investigating the case after it was referred to India by Irish authorities via the CBI.

Kumar’s cellphones had been seized and additional investigation revealed no less than 44 nationals from the UK and Ireland had fallen sufferer to the syndicate masterminded by him together with a dozen of different associates working from Kharagpur and Kolkata. “Investigation also revealed involvement of foreign associates of the accused in arranging foreign software, telecom services and B2C data,” the supply added.