27-year-old BCom grad, wanted in 135 cyber fraud cases, arrested in Gurugram

Jha was arrested in February this year and was granted bail in June for cheating a woman of New Colony of Rs 50,000 after getting her credit card details.

The cyber cell of Gurugram Police arrested a 27-year-old commerce graduate for allegedly duping over a hundred of people from Delhi-NCR by getting their credit/debit card details. Police arrested him from Jharsa Crossing on Tuesday and took him on four-day remand.

According to police, over 135 cases of cyber fraud are registered against Jha in the Delhi-NCR area, out of which around 23 FIRs are registered against him at Gurugram Cyber Police Station.

The accused was identified as Vikas Jha, a resident of Muzzaffarpur, Bihar.

According to police, over 135 cases of cyber fraud are registered against Jha in the Delhi-NCR area, out of which around 23 FIRs are registered against him at Gurugram Cyber Police Station. Besides, there are large numbers of complaints of cyber fraud, in which FIR have not been registered against Jha as yet, police said.

Jha was arrested in February this year and was granted bail in June for cheating a woman of New Colony of Rs 50,000 after getting her credit card details.

Back then, police had recovered a laptop, three mobile phones, one debit card, three SIM cards and Rs 17.70 lakh cash from his possession.

“We had received four fresh complaints from city residents. Based on technical surveillance, Jha was arrested on Tuesday after he visited the city to meet one of his friend,” said Anand Kumar, in-charge of the Cyber Police Station.

Police said Jha, who lived in a rented accommodation in Tilak Nagar in West Delhi with his wife and son, had a lavish lifestyle. He spent most of his money in travelling and on partying.

Police said that unlike other cyber fraudsters Jha never called the victims. He allegedly hacked their email accounts and altered their registered mobile numbers so the bank customers did not receive the One Time Password (OTP) on the their registered mobile numbers, and get alerted.

Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Sumit Kuhar said Jha used to operating out of his rented house and had hired two more people, who used to hack the email accounts of people on a list that Jha would provided them with. He used to allegedly purchase that data from a Delhi-based shopkeeper, police said.

Kumar said Jha is one of the most notorious fraudsters in the Delhi- NCR region and has confessed to duping people mostly working in corporate sectors.

During interrogation, Jha revealed his modus operandi to police that he used to send the card owners a text message along with a link to certain “reward points”. The reward points page used to lead them to a form wherein his targets had to fill up their personal details, including their e-mail ID.

“Through this form, Jha used to fish out the debit/credit card details following which he used to access the OTP after hacking victim’s email account. He used to then use the same accounts for shopping and transferring money,” Kuhar said.

Police said victims would remain unaware of the fraud unless the amount was withdrawn from their bank account. Police said Jha mostly used the money for online shopping and made few cash transactions by first transferring the money to his account and later withdrawing it using his ATM card.

Kuhar said Jha used two softwares to get passwords of the email accounts he got the access to. “We keep reminding residents to change their passwords and should never keep them related to their date of birth, mobile numbers and their names. In the cases reported to us, people had used their date of birth as passwords,” Kuhar said.

The police team investigating the case has not recovered any gadgets from his possession and said they would conduct raids at suspected locations on Thursday to recover the laptop(s), mobile phone(s) and SIM card(s) used to hack victims’ accounts.