Accused registered as a merchant to dupe people

Vadodara: One of the key accused in the cyber-fraud registered himself as a merchant to facilitate availability of cash to the villagers in Dahod. The police said he stored the data including, Aadhaar card details and fingerprints of the locals, for a few months and then decided to execute the scam.
“Satish Bhabhor, who runs a fair-price shop in Dahod, first got himself registered as a merchant by using one of his customers’ fingerprints and Aadhaar details. He offered to help the villagers by providing them cash whenever they needed it,” said a police official.
“Many people staying in villages are not very tech-savvy when it comes to net banking, especially if they are not educated. Such locals used to take help from Bhabhor for withdrawing cash from their account. Bhabhor used to take their fingerprints and transfer money from their bank accounts to his,” the police added. He then used to hand them over the exact amount of cash. Some months ago, Bhabhor came up with the idea of duping his customers. He already had their fingerprint impressions and Aadhaar data. He took the help of Sanjiv Baria, who was well-versed with computers and software.
“Bhabhor brought a biometric fingerprint scanner and removed the glass that used to take the thumb impression. He took images of victims’ fingerprints on his mobile phone. Baria guided him in committing this fraud,” said B N Patel, Vadodara cybercrime police inspector.
He kept the phone screen with the image of the victims’ thumb impression on the scanner and entered the Aadhaar details of the victims to transfer the money from their bank accounts to an account that he had opened. Interestingly, the bank account he opened to siphon off the money too was created by using the fingerprints and Aadhaar details of one of the victims.
Once the money was transferred into his newly created account, he used to withdraw it. The scam came to light when a victim learned that nearly Rs 1 lakh was siphoned off from his bank account following which he approached the police.