Police mentioned that the accused had been posing as buyer care of many reputed banks and on-line buying websites on Google. Officials mentioned that they recovered 12,500 pre-activated SIM playing cards supplied to fraudsters in Jamtara from Murshidabad for over a 12 months.

DCP (Outer North) Ravi Kumar Singh mentioned that the case got here to the fore after a Dubai-based complainant got here to Delhi to go to his daughter. For updating his daughter’s financial institution passbook, he looked for the shopper care quantity on Google. “He called the said number and talked to a person who convinced the complainant to download an application ‘SBI ANYDESK’ for further assistance by sending the link through WhatsApp and posing as SBI customer care personnel,” mentioned the DCP.

Said the officer: “His location was shared with the accused and the net banking page was opened. The accused forwarded the call to a person posing as a senior executive and remotely got access to the mobile phone and made two transactions of Rs 9,50,000 and Rs 50,000 from the account. A case of cheating was lodged and investigation was taken up.”

“It was found that the accused used the call forwarding method and kept changing Google web page customer phone numbers to hide their locations. The phone numbers and IMEI were analysed and it has been noticed that these persons were carrying out cyber fraud in an organised and professional manner on a pan India basis,” added the DCP.

On April 11, a raid was carried out at Nawadih village in Naya Tola in Jamtara, and the accused, Nijamudin Ansari (23), Afroj Alam (23), Sarfaraj Ansari (22), Afroj Ansari (22) Md Amir (22), and Nasim Malitya (31) had been caught. As many as 25 cellphones containing incriminating knowledge and fraud SIM playing cards had been seized.

Modus Operandi

The DCP mentioned the accused would publish their cell numbers as buyer care numbers of a lot of the banks; individuals trying to find buyer variety of banks or on-line buying websites would come upon the given numbers. “During the call, the accused would pose as customer care official. They would get a sharing or mirroring application installed in the victim’s device with the prefix coinciding with the bank name such as SBI ANYDESK, and once they got the application installed, they would siphon off the money,” he mentioned. “A fraudster would keep three to four smart mobile phones and choose a remote place in Nawadih village…where police access is difficult,” added the DCP.