The Commissionerate police busted a SIM swapping racket by arresting two former employees of a telecom operator from Cuttack on Friday night.
The cops seized several SIM cards, Aadhaar Cards and mobile phones from the duo's possession.
City DCP Umashankar Dash on Saturday said a private telecom company lodged a complaint that around 35 vanity numbers sold by it have been deactivated. During the investigation, it was ascertained that two former staffs of the company used the company mobile application to create fake documents of 35 persons and swapped their SIM cards. Then they allotted the number to people outside the State at high rates.
A complaint was registered at Infociy police station and the two have been arrested for illegally accessing the telecom company’s mobile app, creating forged documents and swapping the SIM affecting the original subscriber. Further investigation was ongoing.
“SIM swapping often leads to major financial fraud as one can easily get all personal data of a person including his or her bank and social media account details of the victim. Authorities of the telecom company and those using the unique numbers presently will come under the purview of our investigation,” the DCP added.
Police would take the two arrested persons on a remand for interrogation, he added.
Notably, SIM swapping also known as SIM splitting can be used to take over financial accounts. SIM swapping relies on phone-based authentication. In a successful SIM swap scam, cybercriminals hijack a person’s cell phone number and use it to gain access to his sensitive personal data and accounts.