Two members of gang of online fraudsters arrested in Chandigarh

The arrested accused are Chauhan Ratan, and his brother-in-law Parmar Rajesh of Sector 47, Chandigarh

Two men, who worked as carriers for a gang involved in a slew of cybercrimes, were arrested with ₹35.7 lakh cash and jewellery worth ₹12.94 lakh on Saturday.

The gang’s modus operandi involves hacking accounts, cloning and skimming cards to purchase items and then selling them immediately to get cash. (iStock)

The arrested accused are Chauhan Ratan, and his brother-in-law Parmar Rajesh of Sector 47, Chandigarh. The gang’s modus operandi involves hacking accounts, cloning and skimming cards to purchase items and then selling them immediately to get cash. They use the elaborate angadia (parallel banking network) to deliver the cash.

The accused were arrested on the complaint of a courier boy, Ajay, who told the cops that he had received a call from a foreign number on WhatsApp, asking him to collect two mobile phones from a showroom. While the payment for the same was done online, Ajay shared his Aadhaar Card number to complete the transaction. Next, the callers asked him to sell the recently purchased mobile phones to a shopkeeper in Sector 22, and handover the cash to the two accused.

Cops said the mobile phones had been purchased after fraudulently withdrawing money from the account of a businessman and a case had been registered in Mumbai.

Acting on a tip off that gold had been bought from a jeweller in Sector 17 using the same modus operandi, the police arrested the duo while they were trying to sell the jewels.

A case was registered under Sections 406 (criminal breach of trust ), 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and Sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act at a police station in Sarangpur, Chandigarh. The accused were produced before court and sent to a five-day police remand.

Five arrested for online fraud in Mohali

Mohali Five members of a gang involved in duping people after posing as customer care executives were arrested in Mohali on Saturday.

The arrested accused are Mohit Saxena of Patiala; Parshad Verma from UP, Chetan Kumar of Himachal Pradesh; and Sahil Sharma and Jatin of Chandigarh.

Zirakpur station house officer Deepinder Singh said, “Acting on a tip off that people working in Global Business Park, in front of Metro Mall, were duping foreigners after posing as customer care officials of renowned companies, a raid was carried out in office 115.”

“The accused would call people residing in America, Canada, England, Australia and New Zealand and claim to be calling from renowned technology companies and take their AnyDesk identification number, and then steal their money through cyber fraud,” he added.

A case was registered against the five accused at the Zirakpur police station under Sections 420 of IPC and sections of the IT Act.