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Gang of cyber criminals busted in Gorakhpur, 30 held
Police arrested 30 cyber criminals in Gorakhpur, who duped victims of ₹70 crore via online games and betting apps, operating from rented flats.
Police, on Wednesday, busted a gang of cyber criminals in Gorakhpur, and arrested 30 members who duped people of ₹70 crore through online games and betting apps, police said. They were operating the gang through a rented flat in Gorakhpur.
Five of the criminals are from Gorakhpur and Mau and the remaining are from Odisha, neighbouring Bihar and Chhattisgarh and other states. They duped a number of people from various states in the last three years, said police.
The gang primarily trapped gullible people in the eastern Uttar Pradesh and adjoining areas. The accused were living in three flats in an apartment in Gorakhpur and were arrested from there on Wednesday, said police.
Superintendent of police, Mau, Elamaran G, while addressing a press conference in Mau, said that 10 laptops, 129 SIM cards, 10 Aadhar cards, 2 tablets, 2 QR code scanners, seven PAN cards, 117 mobile phones, 12 archival registers, five driving licenses, 161 ATM cards, three routers, 125 bank account passbooks, three router chargers, 38 bank cheque books and 13 mobile chargers were recovered from their possession.
“Accused are being interrogated. They took a flat on rent in Gorakhpur and were operating from there. Who led the gang is being investigated,” he said.
Police received a letter from Financial Intelligence Unit about suspicious and heavy cash transaction in a bank account in the name of a person in Mau in November last year. Thus police got a clue about the gang, and thereafter started investigation and traced the gang.
The SP said, all accounts, which were being operated by the criminals, have been frozen and information was being collected about the amount in those accounts. Police further added that none of the gang member is an engineer while one of them is doing BA honours from a college in Delhi.
The SP said that the accused used to create IDs in online gaming apps and betting apps in the name of poor people. Later, they used to get their bank accounts opened through their IDs and the money which used to get deposited in these accounts of the victims through online gaming and betting was siphoned off, the SP said.
He added that during interrogation, the criminals revealed that they used to give ₹10,000 to the gullible people initially for using their bank account. To a few people, after collecting their Ids, the criminals didn’t give even a single rupee. They also disclosed that the gang members never met the kingpin and they didn’t have any idea about his whereabouts, and they used to stay in touch with him online.
The SP said that police were investigating further.
