Five held for duping minister’s accountant of ₹2 crore in cyber scam
The cyber cops managed to freeze more than ₹12 lakh that the criminals had transferred to various bank accounts
In a major breakthrough, the cops at Cyber Police Station on Sunday arrested five cyber criminals who had defrauded over ₹2 crore from the accountant of cabinet minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi. The fraudsters contacted the victim via WhatsApp, using the display picture of the minister’s son.
Additionally, the cyber cops managed to freeze more than ₹12 lakh that the criminals had transferred to various bank accounts. Efforts were on to trace the other fraudsters involved in the scam, according to police officials.
On November 13, Ritesh Srivastava, the minister’s accountant, received a message from a WhatsApp number displaying the profile picture of Nandi’s son and company director Abhishek Gupta. Posing as Nandi’s son, the cyber criminals instructed the accountant to transfer ₹2.08 crore into three different bank accounts, claiming it was for finalising some business deals.
An FIR was registered at Cyber Police Station on the complaint of the accountant. Following investigations, a team of cyber cops under inspector Rajeev Tiwari arrested five fraudsters from Bareilly, Dehradun and other districts. They were identified as Divyanshu Singh (24) of Patna, Pulkit Dwivedi (20) of Mau, Sanjeev Kumar Rai (41), Surjeet Singh (28) and Vijay Kumar of Bareilly. The Cyber Cops managed to freeze ₹12.22 lakh in cash, which had been transferred to various bank accounts by the cyber criminals after defrauding the minister’s accountant.
Divyanshu and Pulkit Dwivedi were in direct communication with cyber criminals based in foreign countries through Telegram channels. They tricked bank account holders Sanjeev, Surjeet, and Vijay into providing their bank account details.
Inspector Tiwari informed that questioning from the accused revealed that the gang was operated by conmen in foreign countries especially Dubai, Pakistan and Cambodia. The local fraudsters were in contact with them through telegram app.
The nexus works on two levels: on the first level the conmen sitting in foreign countries dupe bank customers on different pretexts which involves digital arrest or forcing people to transfer cash by posing as cops and threatening them to implicate them in drugs or any other serious offence. The other modus operandi includes investment scams, online gaming and using photographs of big businessmen, officials and ministers etc as their profile pic to lure people and fool them to transfer cash in their bank accounts.
On the second level, the agents of conmen lure people of different states on pretext of earning money. They open current and saving bank accounts on their documents and take their chequebook, ATM, internet banking password. They install an OTP forwarder app in their mobile phone which enables the cyber criminal in foreign countries to get access of the OTP for making bank transactions. These bank accounts are used for receiving cash from the cyber fraud victims. The local agents get their commission through crypto currency. To avoid being identified and traced, VPN and IP bounce techniques are being used by cyber conmen.