Even as the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre has been pushing for more transactions through the digital medium, Delhi Police has arrested two people for allegedly supplying data on credit cards of users to operators of fake call centres. These operators allegedly duped individuals on the basis of these data and transferred money from their accounts. With the investigation still on, more arrests related to this fraud are expected.
How did the scam come into notice?
One Shushil Chandra Rastogi, a senior citizen residing in Delhi's Greater Kailash area, registered a complaint with the police after someone transferred Rs 1.46 lakh from his account to payment merchants like PayU, Paytm, Ola Money, Mobikwik, and Vodafone bill payments.
According to Rastogi, someone called him and said his Citibank credit card had been blocked and if he wanted to reactivate it, some details would be required, news agency ANI reported. Later, he realised that multiple transactions were made from this account.
Rastogi's family members alleged that Citibank did not help when they approached, so they had to go to the police. "Our family has been a loyal Citibank customer for two decades. We have three credit cards from the bank, but when we approached them, they did not help us at all. Then we approached the police, who asked us to write emails to the e-wallet companies, and they wrote some emails themselves so that some of that money could be retrieved," Rastogi's daughter-in-law was quoted as saying by DNA.
During the investigation, the police arrested one Ashish Kumar Jha earlier this month for duping the GK resident, The Times of India reported. Jha had earlier worked with several banks and financial institutions as a sales executive. In 2013, he started tele-calling for selling health insurance on his own web portal.
From where were the bank data collected?
Jha used to purchase these data from Puran Gupta, the second person arrested by Delhi Police in connection with the case.
In 2010, Gupta had started a firm called 'First Step Services and Solutions'. On paper, the firm was created for data collection, data entry, data market research, and online promotion, according to DNA. It is also registered on Just Dial. Gupta stole data from insiders at banks, call centres and authorised firms, and then sold those to crooks.
According to the police, the data were purchased by crooks for 20-50 paise per account holder. Gupta had got the idea of making money by selling data when he earlier worked as a data entry operator.
What the investigation has revealed
"The data of account holders was divided into various categories, depending on the withdrawal limit. Senior citizens and women were kept in the category of easy targets. Students applying for scholarships, and companies using WhatsApp and Facebook for promotional activities, were separate categories," DCP (south-east) Romil Baaniya told DNA.
The accused are in possession of information of around 10 million people across India. The kingpin of the gang, who is based in Mumbai, is yet to be arrested.
A word of caution
Individuals easily get duped, as the crooks already have details like name and card number when they call. Mostly, these operators call posing as bank representatives and convince people to share details like the CVV number and OTP, and use these to withdraw money.
They often say they are trying to confirm suspicious transactions and ask people to quickly share details so that an ongoing transaction could be blocked. Other pretexts like encashing rewards points, card blocked, etc, are also used to lure people, accoing to the TOI report.