A ‘trickster’ allegedly involved in a SIM swap fraud was arrested by the Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police on Monday.
The accused, Tamarana Chiranjeevi, is a native of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. In September last, the police received a complaint from a person who stated that they have three overdraft accounts with DCB Bank used for business activities and all the accounts are registered with his Yahoo mail ID and mobile numbers.
“OTPs were being sent to this mail ID and his mobile numbers as well for the three accounts. When he checked his bank balance in his three accounts, he was surprised to know that ₹ 35,89,899 has been fraudulently transferred into some unknown accounts through IMPS, RTGS, NEFT,” Joint Commissioners of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty said.
He said that the mobile number registered with the victim’s bank accounts got disconnected in May and when he opened Internet banking for the three accounts, he came to know that five beneficiary accounts were added into the three accounts without his knowledge and consent.
Based on his complaint, a case was registered and the police found that Tamarana Chiranjeevi gave his accounts to the accused Diwakar Srivastava on commission for providing bank accounts. “He has supplied the victim’s three accounts, in which about ₹18 lakh have been transferred,” he said.
On October 12, the police arrested three accused persons — Sagar Mahato, Kumar Gourav Singh and Sanjay Agarwal — from Kolkata, in connection with the case. Explaining the modus operandi of the accused persons, Mr. Mohanty said that they open accounts in various banks and give the accounts to fraudsters on commission basis. “The fraudsters send links to the mail IDs of bank customers in the name of Income Tax refund or any other process refund. Once the customer clicks on the links provided in the email, then his electronic device which is used will be compromised. The fraudster gains access into their Internet banking and transfers the money into the bank accounts supplied by Chiranjeevi and others,” the officer said.
Further, Mr. Mohanty urged people not to click on the links received from unknown mail IDs, WhatsApp numbers and mobile numbers. “Do frequent scanning for any malwares,trojan horse virus, key loggers installed in your electronic devices. Never enter your banking credentials in unauthorised websites and try to use a bank provided virtual keyboard for login,” he added.
