Two from cyber fraud gang arrested from Navi Mumbai

Two men were arrested in Navi Mumbai for their involvement in a cyber fraud ring that conned people with promises of part-time jobs. Police seized mobile phones, debit cards, SIM cards, and bank documents, and believe the arrests will lead to the discovery of a larger fraud network.

NAVI MUMBAI: Two men were arrested from Ulwe in Navi Mumbai on Saturday for their alleged involvement in a ring of cyber frauds conning people by promising them part-time jobs. The accused have been identified as Rohit Verma, 32, and Gaurav Jha, 28, both residents of Ulwe.

HT Image

The Matunga police officials have also learnt about the bank accounts operated by the two where they parked the money collected from the victims. The officials also seized seven mobile phones, 22 debit cards, ten SIM cards and chequebooks linked to sixteen bank accounts from the two men.

The cyber detection team of the Matunga police was investigating a case registered on July 1 wherein a 20-year-old student was contacted through WhatsApp about online part-time jobs in Amazon. The complainant ended up losing more than ₹97,000 after sharing his bank details with the conmen.

“The two accused we have nabbed are bottom-tier members of the group whose accounts were used for parking the money that the group managed to loot. There are several more people in the group who were doing the actual planning in terms of getting the data of people who could be targeted, formulating the messages to be sent to them and other such tasks,” said an officer from Matunga police. Both accused are educated but have been unemployed for the last few years.

“We are analysing the data from all the phones and documents to establish the connection of the arrested accused and their group to other cases of a similar kind registered across the city. We hope to solve many of them through these arrests,” said the officer.

The investigation of this case was done by a team headed by the cyber detection officers of Matunga police assistant police inspector Digambar Pawar and police inspector Keshav Wagh under the guidance of deputy commissioner of police for zone 4 Prashant Kadam, assistant commissioner of police for Matunga division Sanjay Jagtap and senior inspector Deepak Chavan.