Rohtak police on Friday claimed to have busted an interstate cyber fraud racket and arrested 12 persons allegedly involved in multiple online fraud cases across several states.
Police recovered 16 mobile phones, bank cheque books, airline and train tickets and other incriminating material from the accused. The operation was carried out by the Cyber Crime Police Station, which solved three separate cyber fraud cases during the investigation.
Superintendent of Police (SP) Gaurav Rajpurohit said the accused used sophisticated cyber techniques, including Remote Access Trojan (RAT) malware, WhatsApp profile cloning, fake banking websites and fraudulent call centres to cheat victims of large sums of money.
“The first case involved a fraud of Rs 17 lakh reported by Dinesh of Vasant Vihar. The accused impersonated company officials by creating a fake WhatsApp profile using the company owner’s photograph. They sent messages to the manager, claiming that the owner was busy in a meeting and urgently needed Rs 17 lakh transferred to a specified bank account,” he informed.
The manager, believing the message to be genuine, transferred the amount. During the investigation, police traced the operation to Latur in Maharashtra and arrested two key accused, Rahul Jaysingh and Rajhans Devidas. A bank cheque book used in the fraud, along with flight and train tickets, was recovered from them.
He said Rahul had been sent to judicial custody, while Rajhans had been remanded to 12 days of police custody. The gang used RAT malware infections to steal sensitive information, clone WhatsApp profiles and make fraudulent demands for money.
“In the second case, Tejveer of Azadgarh was cheated of Rs 1,15,438 after receiving a call from individuals posing as bank officials. The fraudsters offered to increase his credit card limit and requested a One-Time Password (OTP). Once the OTP was shared, money was withdrawn from his account. Four accused from Delhi, including Rajesh and Jagdish, who provided SIM cards, Lalit, who arranged SIM connections and Himanshu, who operated a fake call center, were arrested,” said the SP.
He maintained that the gang regularly posed as bank representatives and targeted credit card users through fraudulent calls.
“The third case involved Sandeep of Pada Mohalla, who lost Rs 2,63,055 after being lured into redeeming supposed credit card reward points. A woman initially contacted him, claiming his Bank credit card reward points were about to expire but Sandeep denied having any credit card. Later, another caller directed him to visit a website and enter his personal details,” said the SP.
He said that after submitting the information, money was debited from his account. Six persons, including Rahul, Deepak, Veeru, Gagandeep, Karan and Faizan were arrested while a total of 15 mobile phones were recovered during the raids.
“The gang created fake banking websites using data sourced through social media platforms and fake SIM cards. Stolen funds were used to purchase expensive goods from e-commerce platforms, which were later sold in the market for cash. Further investigations are under way to identify additional victims and uncover the full extent of the interstate cyber fraud network,” said the SP.
