Gurugram: Two suspects, including a former private bank employee, were arrested from Nathupur in DLF Phase-III for allegedly cheating a large number of people on the pretext of providing them with easy loans, police said on Wednesday.
The police team also seized two mobile phones, a laptop, nine debit cards, three SIM cards and four cheque books of different bank accounts from their possession.
Investigators identified the arrested suspects as Ankit Mishra, 24, of Kanpur and Abhishek Kumar, 23, of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Mishra was currently residing at Aya Nagar in Delhi. The duo was arrested on Tuesday, police said.
Inspector Savit Kumar, station house officer of cybercrime police station (east), said Mishra had worked in the loan section of a private bank in 2019 and left later to work for different private firms.
“He knew the entire banking process and how to call a customer. Mishra had come in contact with another private bank employee, presently at large, who is the main suspect accused of leaking the contact details of customers from the bank’s internal database to him so that he could make the calls. Probably, these customers had approached the bank for a loan,” Kumar said.
“We have managed to get one of the phone numbers of the suspect and are trying to trace his location to arrest him too,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}“We have managed to get one of the phone numbers of the suspect and are trying to trace his location to arrest him too,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}The SHO said that Mishra used to make calls to the customers and promise them that he would get their loans processed and sanctioned if they paid him a commission in advance.
“Once the victims transferred the commission into the bank account provided by Mishra, he used to switch off his phone number. He used to cheat people of ₹10,000 to ₹2.5 lakh according to the loan amount they sought,” the SHO said adding the trio are suspected to have cheated a large sum of money from a number of victims.
Investigators said that Mishra used to provide account numbers of different people to the victims. They said that the account number of his associate Kumar was also used for receiving money cheated from victims.
According to the police, the suspects were operating from a rented accommodation in DLF Phase-III for the last 10 months. They said that their activities came to light after multiple victims made online complaints on the cybercrime helpline of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on the basis of which the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) found their presence in Gurugram and police received an alert leading to their arrest.
An FIR against the duo was registered under section 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code at the Cybercrime police station (East).