Four cyber crooks held for operating fake booking websites

Police arrested four cyber fraudsters for duping pilgrims with fake cottage bookings for Mahakumbh, recovering laptops and cards from them.

Police on Friday busted a gang of cyber fraudsters involved in fake booking of cottages, tents, etc for Mahakumbh. DCP (city) Abhishek Bharti while talking to media persons said that four people have been arrested in connection with five cases which had been registered in the matter of fraud through fake websites so far. Cops recovered laptops, android mobile phones and ATM cards, etc from the possession of the arrested persons.

(Pic for representation)

The accused have been identified as Pankaj Kumar (35) of Nalanda, Bihar, Yash Choubey (20), of Varanasi, Ankit Kumar Gupta (24) of Varanasi and Aman Kumar (29) of Azamgarh.

Bharti informed that police of Cyber Crime Cell arrested four accused of a gang involved in cyber fraud by operating fake websites for booking cottages/tents/hotels etc. in Mahakumbh being organised in Prayagraj.

As per the DCP (City), the accused were offering attractive boarding and lodging packages on their fake website for which gullible tourists and pilgrims were falling prey. The accused used to accept online payments and duped the pilgrims of their hard-earned money.

During interrogation, the arrested accused of the gang revealed that, in a well planned manner, they created various fake/duplicate websites with names similar to Mahakumbh for booking cottages/tents/hotels etc. for pilgrims coming to Mahakumbh. The fake websites used to offer various types of attractive inducements like best accommodation arrangements, VIP snan and darshan etc and fleeced the innocent through online mode.

www.mahakumbhtentbooking.org, www.mahakumbhtentreservation.com