Odisha: Three held for links with cyber crooks behind fake speaker account

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha crime branch on Sunday arrested three persons in Dhenkanal district for their alleged links with some unknown cyber criminals, who recently created a fake WhatsApp account using the photo of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, and sent messages to a number of MPs seeking money. More than 19,000 pre-activated SIMs were seized from the trio.
The cyber crooks, whose names and locations are yet to be ascertained, had procured pre-activated SIMs from the three Odisha natives — Sai Prakash Das (38), Abhinas Nayak (32) and Dusmant Sahoo (23) — last month. They had used one of the pre-activated SIMs to create the fake WhatsApp account in the name of Birla with the sole purpose of cheating and committing fraud.
Delhi Police recently alerted the Odisha crime branch about the phone number with which the fake account was created in Birla’s name as it was traced to Dhenkanal. The criminals managed to get the cell phone numbers of many MPs from the Lok Sabha website and sent them distress messages from Birla’s fake WhatsApp account, seeking money. The police did not disclose whether any MP fell prey to their ploy or not.
“Our investigation into the location of a particular phone number led us to Sai Prakash’s mobile repair shop in Dhenkanal. Abhinas is his employee. They have been selling pre-activated SIMs in the area. Dusmant bought huge quantities of SIMs from them and supplied them to cyber criminals,” ADG (crime branch), Odisha, Sanjeeb Panda said.
The crime branch seized 19,641 pre-activated SIMs of different service providers from Dusmant. He had created a group of buyers and sellers called OTP on Facebook.
“He would receive calls from cyber criminals, who were looking for pre-activated SIMs that were procured by illegally using the KYC details of innocent people. These criminals would create fake accounts and wallets on WhatsApp, Amazon, Myntra, PhonePe and many other such platforms. Dusmant would also share the OTPs with the criminals. He was charging Rs 400 for each SIM. We seized Rs 14.32 lakh from him,” Panda said.