Int’l cyber fraud racket busted, four youths held

The city cyber crime cell on Friday claimed to have busted the local leg of an international cyber fraud racket after arrest of four youngsters from the state capital. The fraudsters used to dupe gullible people by developing friendship, posing as foreign nationals (women and men) through social networking sites and messaging applications.

Among those arrested were two Lucknow residents Sahil Ahmad and Imran Khan, and two from Bareli, Shahzade Hussain and Mohd Sharif. They were part of an international racket, operated by a group of Nigerian nationals and worked according to instructions provided to them through phone and e-mails.

Circle officer (CO) of Hazratganj, Ashok Verma said the probe was initiated on the complaint of Gomti Nagar resident Suresh Gupta, who lost Rs 65,000 while chatting. He said Gupta started chatting on Facebook and WhatsApp with an unknown person posing as a British woman ‘Lender Jerry’ in August second week.

“During chatting on the social site, Jerry evinced keen interest in visiting India and exploring it. She posted her air ticket from London to Delhi, saying that she had landed in India and required Gupta’s help as custom officials had held her for some custom duties to be paid for the valuables and electronics that she was carrying along with her. On this pretext, she got Gupta to deposit Rs 65,000 in a bank account and duped him,” explained the CO and stated, “Later it was discovered the account was opened in the name of one Vivek Gupta”.

He said the probe by cyber crime cell revealed that the bank account was opened on forged ID by people who were working for an international cyber fraud racket from Lucknow. The four youths operating from Lucknow were tracked through electronic surveillance and arrested. The CO informed that the fraudsters had confessed committing many similar frauds with different people in Lucknow and others parts of the country. The police have recovered `65,000 from their possession.

The CO said the cyber crime cell was trying to explore the network of these fraudsters further with help of details extracted from them. He added that some more arrests were likely in near future.