MUMBAI: A Class 12 passout and a self-taught cybergeek has been arrested from Visakhapatnam by the Bangur Nagar police in a multi-crore cyber fraud spanning the length and breadth of the country. Shrinivas Rao Dadi (49) was nabbed from a five-star hotel where he had been hiding. Investigators said Dadi had been converting money that was defrauded from Indian citizens into cryptocurrency and transferring it to Chinese nationals. He was generating a turnover of anywhere between Rs 3 crore and Rs 5 crore everyday out of deceiving citizens. Four others associated with the crime have been held too.
Explaining the modus operandi, investigators said there was a hierarchy in how the scamsters operated. Some of them were tasked with calling up unsuspecting citizens, largely women, over Skype or WhatsApp posing as policemen. They would scare the victim by claiming that a parcel that she or he had sent by courier was found to be containing drugs. They also flashed fake police IDs to deceive the victim. “The terrified victims were conned into downloading apps like Anydesk which provided the fraudster with remote access to the victim’s phone screen. Under various pretexts, the victims were then coerced into accessing their bank details on phone,” said DCP Ajay Bansal.
Citizens were duped in this manner in Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata, among other places. In the Delhi incident, the fraudster had made a video call to the victim dressed in a khaki uniform.
“We first learnt of these incidents in March and started to investigate as the scamsters were assuming identities of senior officers in the Mumbai police force to deceive victims,” said assistant inspector Vivek Tambe, Bangur Nagar police. The police probe was based on technical inputs and took nearly a month and a half. During this time, the police team camped in at least four different cities.
The money defrauded from victims was going into bank accounts operated by certain agents. Two of them, Mahendra Rokde and Mukesh Dive, were held from Titwala while two others, Sanjay Mandal and Animesh Vaid, were nabbed from Kolkata.
Police then learnt that a large number of bank accounts were being operated across the country in this manner to receive defrauded money. The agents would communicate with Dadi, who was their handler, over the Telegram app. Police have frozen a sum of Rs 1.5 crore from 40 bank accounts. Dadi had transferred Rs 25 lakh into his wife’s bank account and police are probing if Dadi’s family was involved in the crime.
Explaining the modus operandi, investigators said there was a hierarchy in how the scamsters operated. Some of them were tasked with calling up unsuspecting citizens, largely women, over Skype or WhatsApp posing as policemen. They would scare the victim by claiming that a parcel that she or he had sent by courier was found to be containing drugs. They also flashed fake police IDs to deceive the victim. “The terrified victims were conned into downloading apps like Anydesk which provided the fraudster with remote access to the victim’s phone screen. Under various pretexts, the victims were then coerced into accessing their bank details on phone,” said DCP Ajay Bansal.
Citizens were duped in this manner in Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata, among other places. In the Delhi incident, the fraudster had made a video call to the victim dressed in a khaki uniform.
“We first learnt of these incidents in March and started to investigate as the scamsters were assuming identities of senior officers in the Mumbai police force to deceive victims,” said assistant inspector Vivek Tambe, Bangur Nagar police. The police probe was based on technical inputs and took nearly a month and a half. During this time, the police team camped in at least four different cities.
The money defrauded from victims was going into bank accounts operated by certain agents. Two of them, Mahendra Rokde and Mukesh Dive, were held from Titwala while two others, Sanjay Mandal and Animesh Vaid, were nabbed from Kolkata.
Police then learnt that a large number of bank accounts were being operated across the country in this manner to receive defrauded money. The agents would communicate with Dadi, who was their handler, over the Telegram app. Police have frozen a sum of Rs 1.5 crore from 40 bank accounts. Dadi had transferred Rs 25 lakh into his wife’s bank account and police are probing if Dadi’s family was involved in the crime.
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