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Five arrested for cheating people on pretext of offering credit card services
The suspects were operating from Delhi and Bihar, said police adding that they have duped over 20 people in Delhi-NCR and transferred over ₹20 lakh to their bank accounts in the last few months
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The Faridabad police on Thursday arrested five men, who posed as bank employees and cheated people on the pretext of helping them redeem their credit card points.
The suspects were operating from Delhi and Bihar, said police adding that they have duped over 20 people in Delhi-NCR and transferred over ₹20 lakh to their bank accounts in the last few months.
The suspects have been identified as Shivam Singh of Sambhal in UP, who lived in a rented room in Delhi’s Najafgarh; Abhishek alias Ganja of Gurugram; Chandan Kumar, Ranjeet Kumar and Vivek Kumar from Bihar, all of whom lived in a rented room in Delhi’s Tilak Nagar, said police.
Nitish Aggarwal, deputy commissioner of police (headquarters), said during questioning, the suspects revealed that they have duped people in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Haryana. “The suspects have done transactions worth ₹18 lakh to ₹20 lakh and transferred this amount to their bank accounts opened with forged documents,” he said. In Faridabad alone, two cases of cheating have been registered against the gang, said police.
Basant Kumar, station house officer of Cyber police station, said the fraud came to light when they received complaints from one Rajender Kumar and one Sunil Kumar of Ballabhgarh, who were allegedly duped of ₹1.98 lakh and ₹1.23 lakh respectively. Two cases of cheating were registered at Cyber police station.
After preliminary investigation, a case was registered against the suspects under sections 419 (cheating by impersonation),420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forging document), 471 (using forged document),120B (conspiracy) and 201A (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) of the IPC at the Cybercrime police station last week.
“The suspects bought data cards from a dealer in Delhi and devised a way to make victims disclose their confidential bank details and credit card details,” said Kumar adding that the suspects got the phone numbers and other details from online sites.
The suspects created a text message and sent them to potential targets informing them about their cards’ reward points, which could be used to get cashback offers and discounts, said police adding that the suspects would send at least 20,000 such messages everyday.
“The suspects ran an illegal call centre in Delhi and made online calls with the help of one Indy call application. Calls were made to potential targets using a spoof application, which informed the user that their credit card has been blocked. They suspects would then tell the victims that their new credit cards, with more credit limit, will be printed and sent to their addresses in four working days,” said Kumar.
Police said the suspects used to generate a fake link--similar to that of a bank--where victims filled in their details, such as credit card number, expiry date, CVV number, and email ID and its password, using which the suspects transferred the money into their bank accounts. Kumar said the suspects also used the credit card details for online shopping.
“The suspects used different customised applications to make calls using customer care numbers of private banks. These days, gangs are using spoof apps to dupe people and several complaints of such nature have been registered in the last five months,” said Kumar.
Police said they have recovered two laptops, one printer, seven phones, 33 SIM cards and ₹38,000 cash from the suspects. They were produced before a court and sent to judicial custody on Thursday, said police.
