4 Taiwanese among 17 arrested for running digital arrest racket: Gujarat Police

Crime Branch (Ahmedabad) joint commissioner Sharad Singhal called this one of the largest scams in recent times involving duping of the elderly into believing they were under probe

Published on: Oct 15, 2024, 10:24:05 IST

By Maulik Pathak

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The Gujarat Police have arrested 17 people, including four Taiwanese, for allegedly running a nationwide “digital arrest” racket that duped the elderly into believing they were under probe for offences such as money laundering or drug smuggling and pressured them to give in to demands for money in exchange for letting them off the fictitious charges.

Police said the Taiwanese nationals were key to the scam. (HT PHOTO)

Mu Chi Sang, 42, Chang Hu Yun, 33, Wang Chun Wei, 26, and Shen Wei, 35, the Taiwanese nationals, were arrested after coordinated raids in Delhi and Bengaluru following technical analysis and surveillance. Police said the four allegedly oversaw the illegal operations, managed rooted mobile phones, and coordinated the scam. The remaining 13 accused are from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Rajasthan.

Crime Branch (Ahmedabad) joint commissioner Sharad Singhal, who called this one of the largest such scams in recent times, said the Taiwanese had been visiting India for the last year and allegedly provided mobile phone apps and technical support to members of the gang to transfer money from one account to another.

Police said the Taiwanese nationals were key to the scam. “They were responsible for supplying the rooted mobile phones and setting up the [required] infrastructure... Their role extended beyond India, with evidence showing that they travelled to countries such as Cambodia, Dubai, and China as part of their larger fraud operations,” police said in a statement.

Saif Haider, one of the arrested Indians, allegedly facilitated the operations of the Taiwanese. Police said he allegedly oversaw the installation of the technical equipment necessary for accessing one-time passwords (OTPs) and accessing bank accounts.

Singhal said they recovered 761 SIM cards, 120 mobile phones, 96 chequebooks, 92 debit and credit cards, and a range of other electronic devices used for the scam. He added the gang “digitally arrested” an elderly citizen for 10 days. Singhal said the gang monitored him through video calls and coerced him into depositing ₹79.34 lakh as a refundable processing fee to resolve a purported Reserve Bank of India issue.

Police said the racket used rooted mobile phones and mini-computers to remotely access OTPs to carry out transactions. The scammers are believed to have duped over 1,000 people. They phoned people posing as Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Central Bureau of Investigation officials. The scammers convinced the victims that their mobile numbers were linked to illegal activities and arrest warrants had been issued. The victims were told to follow instructions.

The fraudsters operated with a sophisticated system involving over 120 rooted mobile devices connected to Wi-Fi routers and mini-computers, allowing OTPs to be routed directly to the Taiwanese involved in the scam. They remotely accessed bank accounts and conducted illegal transactions. Police said the rooted phones were tampered with to bypass security measures and used for cyber fraud, illegal betting, and money laundering activities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

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