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Customer KYC misused to activate ghost e-SIMs for Cambodia fraudsters: Lucknow police
The Cyber Crime Cell launched the probe after a Lucknow resident was allegedly kept under “digital arrest” for seven days, from July 16 to 22, by fraudsters posing as Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Pune officials. Claiming he was involved in a money laundering case, the callers allegedly intimidated him through continuous video calls and forced him to transfer ₹70 lakh into four bank accounts.
What began as the investigation into a ₹70 lakh digital arrest fraud has uncovered an alleged international cybercrime network, with Lucknow Police claiming that a telecom point-of-sale (POS) agent secretly activated e-SIMs using customers’ KYC documents and supplied them to Cambodia-based cyber fraudsters to facilitate digital arrest and other online scams.
The Cyber Crime Cell launched the probe after a Lucknow resident was allegedly kept under “digital arrest” for seven days, from July 16 to 22, by fraudsters posing as Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Pune officials. Claiming he was involved in a money laundering case, the callers allegedly intimidated him through continuous video calls and forced him to transfer ₹70 lakh into four bank accounts.
Additional deputy commissioner of police (DCP) (Crime) Kiran Yadav said police have frozen ₹35 lakh across three beneficiary accounts during the investigation.
Tracing the first mobile number used to contact the victim, investigators reached a Lucknow-based telecom retailer. However, the SIM was found to be registered in the name of an unsuspecting customer who allegedly had no knowledge that another mobile connection had been activated using his identity and used in cybercrime.
According to police, the investigation revealed that a Jio-authorised POS agent allegedly conducted customers’ e-KYC twice on the pretext of server issues. While one SIM was legitimately issued to the customer, another Airtel SIM was allegedly activated using the same KYC documents without the customer’s knowledge.
Police alleged that these unauthorised SIMs were later converted into e-SIM profiles using QR activation codes and supplied to the alleged mastermind, Praveen Srivastava alias Amit. Investigators claimed he sold the e-SIMs through Telegram to Cambodia-based cyber criminals for about 50 USDT each and received payments in cryptocurrency through a BYBIT wallet.
Police arrested Srivastava and the alleged SIM vendor, Sumit Kumar Rawat. They recovered three mobile phones, SIM cards, digital evidence, Telegram chats and a crypto wallet containing 144 USDT.
DCP (Crime) Anil Kumar Yadav said the Indian mobile numbers were allegedly used by Cambodia-based cybercrime syndicates to carry out digital arrest scams, investment frauds, OTP frauds and trading scams while concealing their overseas operations behind Indian telecom identities.
