Mumbai Crime: The scamsters who targetted rich held

The accused are well-educated, said the police

Cyber cops probing the cheating of high-net-worth individuals, recently nabbed five people behind this. The probe has found that the accused ran an interstate racket, that siphoned off money directly from bank accounts of victims by offering them free phones or Diners Club cards. The accused have good educational backgrounds and were involved in similar crimes in the past. At least 16 FIRs have been filed within 2 months and 16 more complainants have come up in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.

mid-day had reported on a scam in which well-to-do people were targeted by scamsters. An offence was registered by a developer in the West Region Cyber police station on January 31. The complainant told the cops that on December 24, 2022, he had received a call from a person identifying himself as Saurav Sharma. He claimed to be from Citi Bank and offered a Citi Bank Diners Club card. Sharma also said, if he accepted the card, he would get a membership of Willingdon Club, Tardeo.

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How he was cheated

"The complainant was provided two links mentioning ‘citibank' and they sought his name, address, Aadhaar card and PAN card numbers. To make the communication authentic, a certificate of the Department of Telecommunication was sent to him. But after he clicked on the links, Rs 9.81 lakh was withdrawn from his account. The money was later used to purchase golden coins from a Tanishq showroom in Chennai. The complainant immediately rushed to the Mumbai police and an FIR was lodged.

The Cyber cops had received complaints of the same nature and the number of victims was increasing. DCP (Cyber) Balsing Rajput formed a team under the leadership of Inspector Suvarna Shinde assisted by Inspector Mahendra Jadhav, API Amit Utekar, PSIs Rahul Khetre, Deepak Tayde and Vijay Kumar Ghorpade to trace the scamsters.

"There were two modus operandi used in this fraud. One was targetting people by randomly calling or sending them messages. Secondly, targetting persons who had recently purchased highend cars such as BMW or Mercedes. In most cases, the target would be using Iphones, so fraudsters would send a bugged Android phone within couple of hours for free," DCP Rajput said.

Accused held

Through the links provided by the fraudsters, the couriers who sent the mobile phones were questioned and police found that the fraudsters were operating from different states. Teams were sent to Chennai, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. They managed to nab 3 accused: Nandkumar M Chandrashekhar, 35, John David Raj, 35, and Pavathrani Ramki Parthsarthi, 33, from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The police seized R3.88 lakh, and 122 Singapore dollars from them.

After the arrests, cops got information about the second in command behind the racket. Aiyappan Murugsen, 35, was arrested from Delhi while prime accused Ashish Ravindranathan from Ahmedabad is absconding. "Aiyappan and Ashish were together for the past 14 years and have committed similar crimes by cheating people on the pretext of offering them American Express cards," said a police officer.

During the interrogation, the cops found that multiple SIM cards were used by the fraudsters and they were provided by a person from Haryana. The team nabbed him, identified as Premsagar Ramswarup, 23. Premsagar has till now provided 1,600 SIM cards of different service providers to the fraudsters. These were distributed from Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.

"The accused would not only purchase gold coins but they would order highend phones from an electronic outlet, and for the purchase, use the victims' KYC details. The gold and mobile phones were sold and the money would be routed to the prime accused. Later there would be a 10 per cent commission for each member of the racket," added DCP Rajput.

Prime accused Ashish is an IIT dropout and has been involved in similar frauds since he was 19 years of age. Raj has done Hotel Management and has knowledge of club cards and doubts which would be asked by victims. Parthsarthi has an MBA, while Aiyappan has completed mechanical engineering.

Hawala used

The fraudsters used hawala to transfer the cash and also converted the money to Bitcoins. The cops have frozen 4633.2 USDT from one person's account. "This racket eyed people from a high income group. We urge citizens not to get trapped into free privilege cards and memberships of clubs, and if they have been cheated, they should register a complaint with Cyber police," said Rajput.