By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 30 Sep: Uttarakhand Police and a Home Ministry team have busted a cartel indulging in a SIM card racket. This gang used to send SIM cards to South-East Asia, where they were used for cyber fraud. One cyber-criminal has been arrested in this regard from Manglaur (district Haridwar). The arrested criminal used to operate a large racket related to SIMs which were used for cyber frauds. The arrested criminal has been given an imaginary name of Sohil by the Police and, from his possession, 1,816 SIM cards, two cheque books, 5 mobile phones and 2 biometric devices have also been recovered.
This information was shared today by IG, Crime and Law & Order, Nilesh Anand Bharne at a press conference held here today.
Bharne stated that the arrested criminal used to go from door to door in the Mangalore police station area to lure a large number of women with fake government schemes or a set of cups from a company and collected their documents such as Aadhaar Cards, and then used to fraudulently activate SIMs cards on their IDs by also obtaining their thumb impressions on biometric machines.
Bharne stated that the criminal had managed to get thousands of SIM cards activated fraudulently. He sold these activated SIM cards to Cyber Thugs through WhatsApp OTP Groups, who operated mainly from China and Cambodia. He was also getting additional money at the rate of Rs 3 to Rs 50 per OTP used for cyber frauds. The IG added that though the said WhatsApp OTP group operated from China and Cambodia, other accused sitting in countries like Myanmar and Thailand were also were activating WhatsApp and other applications on these Indian SIMs and making WhatsApp calls or trapping innocent people on Instagram in the name of trading/investment and by giving other temptations and committing cyber fraud all over India.
Bharne added that it was in April this year that the first complaint was received by the Police. On the basis of the complaint filed by a resident of Majri Mafi village in Mohkampur, Dehradun, a case was registered at the Police Station, Nehru Colony, and forwarded to the STF/Cyber Crime Police Station. In his complaint, the victim had stated that he was in contact with a Facebook friend named Kalyani, allegedly a resident of Chennai for the last 8 months, who claimed that she was working as an Advisor. She used to ask people to invest money in a website and earn three times the profit. She also shared many screenshots of such chats on Facebook in which certain people claimed that they had earned three times the profit. On the advice of Kalyani and observing such claims for several months, the complainant decided to also invest and sought the ‘help’ of Kalyani. She gave him her WhatsApp number and then sent a link of a website on WhatsApp and informed him how to create his user ID on that website and what else to do. She also shared with him a WhatsApp number of a programmer who told him what to do, where to go on the website, which link to open, etc., through his mobile phone.
The complainant believed them and kept doing as they ‘guided’ him and made his first investment of Rs 10,000 and received a profit of Rs 23,776 in his bank account within two days. He then “invested” again, this time an amount of Rs 25,000 but he was told that the management has made some changes and now a minimum investment limit of Rs 50,000 has been fixed. He was given an option either to add an investment of Rs 25,000 or withdraw the investment of Rs 25,000 which he had deposited already. He deposited another Rs 25,000 in the account mentioned by them for investment, but they again claimed the policy had been changed and now he would have to invest another Rs 1 lakh more. He however got suspicious and threatened the so-called team that he will report the matter to Cyber Cell, but his number was blocked and the website- td network.info and tdnetwork.top was also closed down.
In view of the seriousness of the case, the SSP, STF, constituted a joint police team led by DSP, Cyber Crime Police Station, Dehradun, for investigation. Inspector Vikas Bhardwaj was given the responsibility to investigate who obtained data by corresponding with the bank concerned, service provider companies, as well as with Meta and Google, etc. Details of the bank accounts/mobile numbers, etc., used in the crime and technical/digital evidence was collected by analysing the obtained data thoroughly.
Bharne added that, along with this, the investigation also revealed that the mastermind of the incident had collected Aadhaar Card details, photographs and thumb impressions of the women and activated SIM cards in their name. He also promised them that they would be given a set of cups under a government scheme, etc., and got SIM cards issued on their IDs.
The investigating team has identified the main accused and while continuing the search, raids were conducted at several places. It managed to arrest him from Manglaur in district Haridwar, yesterday. The case was investigated by Inspector Vikas Bhardwaj, who was assisted by STF Inspector NK Bhatt and his team under the supervision of Additional SP Chandramohan Singh and DSP RV Chamola. DSP SP Mishra coordinated with Union Ministry of Home Affairs (I4C) to analyse the mobile numbers and received several criminal complaints from across India.
The given name of the arrested person is Sohil, but it is presumed that the real name has been hidden as the investigation is still under progress. Recovery of 1,816 SIM cards, two cheque books, 5 mobile phones and 2 biometric devices was also done. The arresting police team comprised Inspector Vikas Bhardwaj; Inspector Nand Kishore Bhatt; SI Vipin Bahuguna; SI Rajeev Semwal; and ASI Manoj Beniwal besides others.
