A 25-year-old man, along with his three associates, has been arrested by the Cyber Cell of the Shahdara district for luring innocent people into sharing their bank account details and cheating them of lakhs. Senior police officials said, “During the course of investigation, the accused are using twenty different banks accounts for transaction and same has been blocked by the investigating agency. During this process we have blocked Rs 3 lakh in their accounts.”
DCP Shahdara Nupur Prasad said, “We have arrested Ram Kumar Mandal, the kingpin, Purnanand Tiwari, Shabir Ali and Surendra Singh. With their arrest, we have recovered two laptops, four smart phones, six keypad phone, Rs 75000, silver coins, silver ornaments and cheque books.
The gang was busted after the police received a complaint from a 78-year-old woman, a resident off Anand Vihar in March who stated that she was duped by unidentified people of Rs 1.85 lakhs after she received a call from a man posing as an RBI official.
The man claimed that he can help her in linking her Aadhar card and duped of the amount.
To solve the case, a team of the Cyber Cell under Additional DCP 2 Rajeev Kumar started investigation.
During initial enquiry, they managed to recovered around Rs 40,000 from different e-wallets.In depth surveillance of these e-wallets led cops to the owner of one e-wallet, Surendar Singh.
He told police that he used to help people of Rajasthan in paying their electricity bills through e-wallets. Singh was arrested. he revealed that he used to obtain the bills in bulk through whatsapp or mai from one Shabir Ali, who took commission. For which, he used to take a five per cent commission. “The money was transferred through IMPS/NEFT or cash to Shabir Ali. Then accused Shabir Ali used to send all the customer details to Purnanand Kumar Tiwari for the online electricity payment by using the cheated amount available into the suspected E- Wallets. The details of the alleged e-wallets were given by their kingpin, Ram Kumar Mandal,” said Prasad. Prasad said, “At the instance of Surendar Singh, Shabir Ali was arrested from Bikaner Rajasthan. He revealed that he came in touch with Mukesh who suggested that they use illegal money stored in e-wallets to pay online bills. He allured him to pay huge percentage if he provides him clients. On this he contacted Surendra Singh amd persuaded him. Through this modus operandi, the accused started using illegal money to execute transaction and converting it into white money. He used to collect details from Surendra and sent to Mukesh in his whats app. After confirmation of payment, he transferred the amount to the Mukesh after deducting 15 per cent commission.”
Teams were sent to Jharkhand to nab Puranand Tiwari. To evade arrest, he shifted from his native place in Jamui in Bihar to other states, which was close to border. Sustained efforts bore results when Purnanand Tiwari was arrested from the Naxalite area. Based on technical surveillance and local intelligence, we arrested Ram Kumar Mandal from Jamtara in Jharkhand. Explaining their modus operandi, the DCP said, “ This type of gang used to make a fake call pretending himself as Bank Manager or the employee of RBI, and asked the complete details of the card holder. After obtaining credential information i.e. card number, CVV number & OTP. They transferred the whole amount into various E-wallets/virtual accounts & routed the money into other e-wallet & finally they transferred the money into bank accounts & paid the utility bills i.e. electricity bill, DTH & Mobile recharge & etc. Hence converting illegal money stored in E-wallet into cash.