4 arrested for providing bank accounts to cyber frauds

MUMBAI: Four men arrested for aiding cyber fraud that duped a Kandivali resident of ₹32 lakh by posing as police over a fake money laundering case.

MUMBAI: The North Cyber police have arrested four men for providing their bank accounts to cyber frauds who cheated a Kandivali resident of ₹ 32 lakh by placing him under ‘digital arrest’.

4 arrested for providing bank accounts to cyber frauds

According to the police, the arrested four men are identified as Gangavihan Bhoju, Vikas Bishnoi, Premsukh Bishnoi and Ramniwas Bishnoi. They were produced before the court on Wednesday and remanded to police custody till Monday.

The cyber police were approached by a retired person who told them that on December 12, he received a call from a man who claimed to be from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and informed him that an FIR had been lodged against him at Delhi’s RK Puram police station.

The caller told the complainant that he would have to speak to the concerned police officers and transferred the call to someone who claimed his name was Anil Sharma and said he was the deputy police commissioner of Delhi police. He told the complainant that he has been named as an accused in a money laundering case.

Sharma obtained detailed information from the complainant about his bank accounts and told him that he had been placed under ‘digital arrest’.

Sharma then asked him to transfer his savings to four account numbers so that they could verify if the money was connected to the laundering case or not. He assured the complainant that the money would be returned in three days, provided he was found to be innocent.

“The complainant trusted the fraud as the authority letter for money transfer had the emblem of the Reserve Bank of India,” said an officer from North Cyber police station.

The complainant went to the bank and transferred his savings of ₹32 lakh to the account numbers given by the accused. For three days he waited to get the money back, but when he did not receive any call, he approached the police and registered a case of cyber fraud.

“We traced the bank accounts and arrested the account holders. We are now going to find out who had the four loaned their accounts to,” said the police officer.