Jamtara fraud module busted, 22,000 SIM cards seized
The crooks were running a scam, in which they would impersonate customer care executives of various banks and e-commerce sites, and dupe unsuspecting customers
The Delhi Police on Wednesday announced the arrest of 31-old-man from West Bengal’s Murshidabad, who illegally procured Indian and international SIM cards in bulk, activated them, and then sold them to cybercriminals operating from Jharkhand’s Jamtara district and other parts of the country.
Officers aware of the arrest said they had seized nearly 22,000 SIM cards from the accused, identified as Nasim Malitya.
“It took us nearly six hours to count all the SIM cards. Nearly 16,000 of them were of three leading cellular service providers of India. International SIM cards from countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka were also there,” said an investigator probing the case, on condition of anonymity.
Malitya’s arrest came after the Delhi Police busted a gang of cybercrooks operating from Jamtara and arrested five people involved in running a pan-India scam, in which they would impersonate customer care executives of various banks and e-commerce sites, and dupe unsuspecting customers.
“Apart from the 21,761 used and unused SIM cards that were recovered from Malitya, at least 12,500 pre-activated SIM cards were already provided to Jamtara’s cyber criminals over a period of one year. The cyber criminals were posting their mobile numbers on Google as the customer care helplines of banks of repute and several e-commerce sites,” said deputy commissioner of police (outer-north) Ravi Kumar Singh.
Senior officers said the Jamtara gang was busted by the cyber police station of Delhi’s outer-north district following a complaint filed by a Dubai resident, who was duped of ₹10 lakh while he was in Delhi to meet his daughter. The man wanted to get his daughter’s bank passbook updated and searched for the bank’s customer care number on the internet.
The complainant said he dialled a number he found on the internet, where one of the crooks impersonated a customer care executive and tricked him into downloading a mobile app through which the scammers made two unauthorised transactions of ₹9.5 lakh and ₹50,000, said an officer aware of the case.
The victim then filed a police complaint, and subsequently, the call detail records of the phone numbers used by the suspects were examined. Through technical surveillance, the suspects were tracked to Jamtara and five of them were arrested on April 11 following a raid in their village with the help of the local police, said DCP Singh.
“The five arrested men were identified as Nizamuddin Ansari, 23, Afroj Alam, 23, Mohammad Amir Ansari, 22, Sarfaraj Ansari, 22, and Afroj Ansari, 22. We recovered 25 mobile phones containing incriminating data and fraudulent SIM cards… Their interrogation revealed that the SIM cards were supplied after activation from Murshidabad, West Bengal. In one mobile phone, more than 300 SIM cards were activated in a day,” the DCP said.
A police team then took Nizamuddin to Murshidabad, and he led them to a Maltiya, a local SIM card supplier. A raid at Malitya’s house led to the recovery of two cellphones in which the SIM card used to dupe the complainant was activated. The team also recovered 21,761 more SIM cards that he had kept in buckets at his house, officers said.
DCP Singh said at least 77 cyber fraud crimes have been connected to Maltiya and the five arrested from Jamtara. “There is a likelihood that a larger number of cases may be connected with this scam,” he added.