NEW DELHI: With the arrest of seven people, police have busted a countrywide network of crooks who had duped more than a thousand people by posing as customer care representatives of banks. While the
call centre was being operated from
Jamtara village in
Jharkhand, the gang members were also present in Punjab.
Additional CP (crime) Dr A K Singla said that a Cyber Cell team led by DCP (crime) Bhisham Singh arrested Mohd Salim, Mohd Abdul Rahim, Mohd Mumtaz Ansari and Jaggannath Mandal from Jamtara, while their three associates — Majer Singh, Varinder Singh and Abhishek Sharma — were nabbed from Punjab.
The gang came on the police radar after numerous people complained of losing money after talking to bank representatives who offered to renew their cards and, in turn, took confidential bank details.
A probe revealed that the money was transferred to e-wallets registered through phone numbers procured on fake identity cards. The numbers were traced and the first breakthrough came with the arrest of Majer, Varinder and Abhishek from Punjab. They told police that the
call centre was being operated from Jamtara and they only collected the money and deposited it into bank accounts in Jharkhand through cash deposit machines.
A raiding team led by ACP Aditya Gautam and inspectors Rajeev Kumar and Sandeep Malhotra was sent to Jharkhand to track the other gang members. After a raid at the call centre, Mandal and his three associates were arrested. The cops found that the crooks would make calls all across the country, especially in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Bengaluru.
The mastermind, Mandal, told police that he formed the gang in 2015 after leaving his job in an ice-cream factory in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The gang used to load the cheated money in their online wallets registered using SIMs procured on fake IDs. The money would then be transferred into e-wallets of their associates residing across the country so that the trail runs cold.
Representative image
