A man has been arrested for setting up a fake website of a telecom firm to dupe over 1,000 people of crores of rupees on the pretext of setting up mobile phone towers, the police said on Wednesday.

The suspect, 28-year-old Sanjay Kumar, is a diploma holder who allegedly took to conning people to make Rs 20 lakh to set up his own cloud communications firm, said Anto Alphonse, deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka).

While Sanjay operated the alleged fraud by himself — only using a voice artist to record certain information — he was helped by two friends in setting up bank accounts for receiving the money, the DCP said.

The duo, Santosh Kumar and Arjun Prasad, were also arrested. “These two men provided Sanjay with multiple bank accounts and charged him 10-15% of all the transactions. They had used fake documents to open those bank accounts,” the officer said.

The fraud came to police’s notice late last year when a man from west Delhi’s Dabri lodged a complaint about a Rs 14,413 fraud. “The man had come across a website offering installation of mobile phone towers. He called the number mentioned on the website and was asked to fill up a form. Soon, he received an ‘approval letter’, but was asked to deposit Rs 14,413 in a bank account as a security deposit,” the DCP said.

The man made the payment, but received a message saying the money had been deposited in the name of a man called Arjun Prasad. That made him suspicious and he approached the police.

The cyber cell of Dwarka police district obtained the details of the website and also analysed the bank account used in the alleged fraud. Enquiry at the bank branch and the places where cash had been withdrawn provided the police with a lead in their probe.

First Published: Mar 14, 2019 01:36 IST