“The scamsters cheated people across the country with fake SIM cards, Aadhaar cards etc and would deposit money in fake bank accounts to avoid arrest”.
Gurugram: Coordinated raids against Nuh cyber criminals revealed that the fraudsters had been targeting people across the country. Cyber frauds to the tune of Rs 100 crore involving over 28,000 people have been unearthed during interrogation, a special report by Sanjay Yadav in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
“The scamsters cheated people across the country with fake SIM cards, Aadhaar cards etc and would deposit money in fake bank accounts to avoid arrest.
People from Haryana to Delhi and UP to Andaman-Nicobar have been targeted,” Nuh Superintendent of Police Varun Singla said.
The fraudsters would lure victims with attractive offers of sale on products like bikes, cars, mobile phones etc. by posting misleading advertisements on Facebook Bazaar/OLX.
The unsuspecting victims then called the fraudsters on the given fake mobile number and the fraudsters took money from the victims on the pretext of courier charges, transportation of products etc, but the products were never delivered.
They would also post advertisements on social media platforms offering work-from-home jobs, mainly related to packaging of Natraj Pencils and promising an earning of Rs 30,000 per month and cheated the gullible on the pretext of registration fee, packing materials, courier fee etc.
The fraudsters also checked random number series in the UPI apps to get the names of victims registered against those numbers on those apps. The fraudsters then impersonated friends and relatives of the unsuspecting victims and requested them to receive payment on their behalf.
They were also duping victims through sextortion by creating attractive profiles on social media platforms and luring victims to do video chat where they carried out screen recording of the victims in compromising positions and then extorted huge sums of money from them.
A senior investigating officer said the accused revealed that fake bank accounts, fake SIM cards, mobile phones, cash withdrawal/disbursal and technical services such as posting an advertisement on social media websites were provided by only a few handful of individuals in a village after charging their commission fee ranging from 5% to 50% of the fraud amount.
Singla said the cybercriminals were 18-35 years old and worked in groups of three or four. The mobile phones and SIM cards seized during the raid he added.
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