The CEN police Belagavi have recovered Rs 10 lakh of a retired BSNL employee who had lost the same in a major cyber scam in Belagavi and three persons have been arrested in this connection.
Of the three accused arrested by the police, the main kingpin is from Jamtara dist Jharkhand and the other two are from Nashik. It is learned that Yallappa Narayan Jadhav, a retired BSNL employee at Maruti Galli Kangrali BK, was robbed of Rs 10 lakh on June 9 through cyber fraud.
On that day, an anonymous person told Jadhav on the phone that he was speaking from SBI Bank and asked him to send his photos on WhatsApp as he needed an Aadhar card and bank passbook details to update the KYC in his account. Following this Rs 10 lakh were withdrawn from Jadhav’s account as he shared the OTP and he had clicked one link which the fraudsters had sent by a text message.
Jadhav had lodged a complaint with the Belagavi CEN Police Station on June 10, the next day after realizing the nature of the fraud and taking note of this complaint, Inspector of Police CEN team led by Gaddekar, under the guidance of Commissioner of Police Tyagarajan and Deputy Commissioner of Police Dr. Vikram Amte, thoroughly investigated the case and recovered Rs 10 lakh.
Three persons, including the main accused from Jharkhand’s Jamtara district and two others from Nashik, were arrested and interrogated on July 15 in connection with the cyber fraud case. They confessed to the cyber fraud.
A total of Rs 12 lakh 56 thousand has been seized from the accused and a case has been registered under the Cyber Act. Five mobiles and three debit cards were seized from the accused and 50 accounts of different banks used by them for fraud were frozen.
Police investigations have revealed that the accused have so far used 48 mobiles and 304 SIM cards for cyber fraud. It has been revealed that these three have committed several cyber fraud cases in Belagavi, Gulbarga, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
There is a web series on the same as well Jamtara: Sabka Number AyegaA group of small-town young men run a lucrative phishing operation until a corrupt politician wants in on their scheme — and a cop wants to fight it.
How the crime is committed- modus operandi
Step 1: Acquire a series of mobile numbers, use all of them to try and log in to a bank account. If a number prompts an OTP, it’s time for the next step.
Step 2: Call the number’s owner and pretend to be customer care executives of the mobile operator offering to upgrade SIM cards or Know Your Customer (KYC) details. Gain trust, obtain the victim’s email ID.
Step 3: Send an email to the victim containing text to be sent to the official customer care number. It’s a ruse to register your email ID with the victim’s number, so that you can put in an official request to convert the SIM into an e-SIM. Once done, the victim’s phone number and everything else it’s linked to, including the bank account, is under your control.
Superb work of belgaum police