Six members of online crime syndicate held for duping people of ₹15 crore: Police
Six members of the syndicate were arrested on Friday from Rourkela, Bhilai, Raipur in Chhattisgarh, and Ludhiana in Punjab after more than 210 complaints from across the country to the cross-border gang
Rourkela police have busted an international online crime syndicate that allegedly defrauded people of at least ₹15 crore, according to preliminary investigations, the police announced.
Six members of the syndicate were arrested on Friday by a team of Rourkela Police led by subdivisional police officer Upasana Padhi from Rourkela, Bhilai, Raipur in Chhattisgarh, and Ludhiana in Punjab after the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) linked more than 210 complaints from across the country to the cross-border gang.
The syndicate has fleeced victims of at least ₹15 crore and received payments through Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange where transactions worth at least 30,000 US dollar tether (~ ₹24.93 lakh) have occurred in an account of an accused. US dollar tether is a cryptocurrency presently worth ₹83.12.
A probe was initiated after a central government officer was duped of ₹67.7 lakh and filed a case with the Cyber Police Station Rourkela on December 30. When initial investigations revealed that the case was linked to this organised international crime syndicate, a team led Padhi was formed on January 2, which received technical assistance from I4C and the state crime branch.
This syndicate has been active for more than a year, Padhi said. The six arrested Indians include Ujjwal (who had also created a betting app and frequently travelled to Dubai, Cambodia and Sri Lanka), Pankaj Rao, Sandeep Joshi and Mohammed Nassem (was involved in the Mahadev betting app case and was arrested in 2022).
The ringleader of the operation is suspected to be a foreign national, whom the arrested call “lady boss”, Padhi said. “We have some evidence about her. We aren’t sure which country she belongs to. She is fluent in English, according to them,” she said.
Most conversations among the gang members took place over Telegram app to avoid leaving a digital trail, but police have found recorded voice messages on the accused persons’ phones. The accused also said that there are seven foreign nationals involved in this. “We are working to find out their nationalities and real identities,” Padhi said.
Rourkela police is in talks with the Central Bureau of Investigation to communicate with Interpol regarding the case, she said. It is not yet known if Cambodian authorities have arrested anyone linked to the syndicate yet.
In India, the syndicate created a clone of Indira Securities, a genuine, SEBI-registered entity, to dupe victims. This fake app was never available on the Google Play Store, and victims were sent a link to sideload the app.
The fake app was advertised on Facebook and Instagram as an investment opportunity to lure people. The police have written to Meta that runs these social media platforms for more details even though the ads disappeared after police made the arrests.
Parallelly, as part of its modus operandi, the syndicate sets up a fake call centre in Cambodia using “cyber slaves”, that is, foreign nationals, who are tricked into relocating to Cambodia for “better job opportunities” but are instead forced to work as online scammers in locked compounds.
To set up a fake call centre in Cambodia using “cyber slaves”, the “lady boss” had asked Ujjwal to hire 10 people from India, Padhi said. Ujjwal had contacted an agent to hire fresh graduates. “We are on the verge of identifying the agent,” she said.
These “cyber slaves” call victims in India from Indian SIM cards that are procured and transported by a member of the syndicate, “motivating” them to invest in stocks. Initially, the fake app allows victims to withdraw initial returns, but the pay outs eventually stop.
This is called a “pig butchering scam” where akin to fattening a pig for slaughter, victims of financial frauds are lured into making increasing contributions to a seemingly sound investment before the defrauding party disappears.
Padhi’s team is investigating another such fake app that is defrauding people. Joshi allegedly procured 200 SIMs, which were taken to Cambodia by Ujjwal and Rao in their luggage in two trips in December, Padhi said. It is not clear if all the SIMs were registered in Joshi’s name, or used Joshi’s face to comply with KYC norms.
India’s Department of Telecommunications uses a in-house tool for SIM subscriber verification called ASTR to check if multiple SIMs have been issued to the same face. It is not yet known if Joshi was flagged by ASTR.
“We don’t have the actual SIMs yet, but we have a photograph and an Excel file with a list,” Padhi said. “We are going to share it with the telecom service providers to ascertain which of them has issued the SIMs.”
There police have thus far identified seven bank accounts where the victims’ money was initially kept, and two payout accounts from where money was withdrawn by the fraudsters. These are all Indian accounts, some of which were accessed from Abu Dhabi and Cambodia according to internet logs received from the banks, police said.
“They belong to various people across India,” Padhi said. Police is investigating how many of these accounts are mule accounts and how many belong to members of the syndicate. For at least one bank account, the KYC documents used were linked to a member of the syndicate.
“We are investigating if these were fake KYC documents or not. We are looking for similar relationships with other bank accounts,” she said. “There are many more accounts yet to be investigated and we are gathering more evidence about that.”
Ujjwal told police that he received payments on Binance. Due to the recent blocking order on Binance’s app and website in India, police were not able to access his account, but have written to Binance for details of the transactions. “Whatever data we have calculated is from the emails he received from Binance,” Padhi said. It is not clear why the police could not access Binance using a VPN.