Mumbai: 12-man gang behind Rs 25-cr like-and-earn scam arrested

In a major crackdown by the Cyber Cell of Mumbai police 12 fraudsters have been arrested in three separate offences for cheating people on the pretext of parttime jobs such as likeandearn or comment The accused who were operating through rented shops managed to cheat people of more than Rs 25 crore One of the gang members arrested by cops had even formed bogus companies to send money outside the countryOn May 1 midday had published a cover page story as our reporter dove deep into the lsquolikeandearnrsquo scam to break down how they operate and how you can safeguard against them midday reached out to the fraudsters to uncover how the scam operates and how victims were duped after being offered workfromhome opportunities and asked to refer other names to fraudstersStamps of various lsquoofficesrsquo created by the arrested accusedTrap of easy moneyIn the first case in the crackdown on March 5 a Chembur resident received a message on Whatsapp by a person identifying herself as Heena She told the man he could get good returns if he registered for a parttime job such as likeandearn The complainant was lured by the easy money and started investing as per the instructions Within 13 days the man gave the fraudsters Rs 2720 lakh which he was asked to pay in different bank accounts When he realised he was cheated he registered an offence in the East Region Cyber police stationAlso Read lsquoSo where CAN we smokersquoAssistant Police Inspector Mahesh Jadhav and Inspector Vaishali Shravgi launched the probe and through technical analysis of bank accounts mobile numbers and email IDs found the location of the fraudsters was MiraBhayander A team went to the area and after an intense search finally managed to locate a gala in which 3 persons were found The accused were identified as Sneh Mahavir Prasad Shaktawat alias Aditya Jain 24 Mahavir Singh Daroga alias Roshan 22 and Dev Kishan Gurjar 27 The police have recovered 44 cheque books of different banks 22 debit cards 13 mobile phones 9 rubber stamps and 44 SIM cardsBalsing Rajput DCP CyberAccused rented a flatIn the second case which was also registered with the East Region Cyber police station a Ghatkopar resident was cheated of R1087 lakh after being promised good returns in a job Inspector Sheetal Mundhe led the team to track the accused and found them from Andheri The accused had rented a flat in front of Cubic Mall On May 10 the police nabbed Manoj Nerurkar 38 and Kalpesh Medhekar 27 and on May 15 Subhash Nagam 45ldquoThe accused have formed 43 different companies to circulate the money In fact they had managed to get ImporterExporter Code certificates for 10 companies and a GST certificate for 5 companies which were also bogus The accused have learnt company law and methods to register companies and loopholes in the system We have discovered that they have done transactions 25 to 30 times and sent money to Dubai and Hong Kong toordquo said an official from Cyber Cell ldquoAll the accused are Jogeshwari E residentsrdquo the official addedDCP Balsing Rajput second from right addresses the press conference that revealed the arrests PicAnurag AhirelsquoMore than 180 accounts createdrsquoThe third case involved the cheating of a 35yearold woman from Colaba The fraudsters cheated her of Rs 2535 lakh on the pretext of a parttime online task job in the first week of April Senior Inspector Devraj Borse and Sameer Lonkar launched the investigation and discovered that the accused were likely to be around Andheri In a search operation the police managed to nab 6 persons in connection with the offence The accused were identified as Millind Shetye 55 Santosh Shetye 48 Gorbahadur Amar Singh 52 Laxman Sima 37 Shagufta Khan and Tushar Ajwani 38 All the accused are residents of MumbaildquoThe accused have cheated several persons We found that they have created more than 180 bank accounts and they cheated people of R25 crore We have frozen the amounts and are still trying to get more information about their accountsrdquo said another officialldquoThree of the 10 teams formed especially to track such fraudsters have managed to crack the cases we are confident more accused will be nabbed in near future We urge citizens not to fall for messages which claim to give them parttime jobs with earnings of upto Rs 5000 per day The accused are getting smarter and smarter and trying to erase all their technical footprintsrdquo said Balsingh Rajput DCP Cyber170No of such fraud cases filed in first three months of this year