4 held for running fake websites of popular brands

THEY RAN FAKE SITES OF REPUTED BRANDS SUCH AS AMUL, PATANJALI AND HALDIRAM BY GETTING THEM REGISTERED WITH SIMILAR SOUNDING DOMAIN NAMES

NEW DELHI: Four people were arrested for allegedly running fake websites of multiple reputed brands and duping aspiring businessmen on the pretext of getting them franchise, dealership and distributorship, police said Sunday.

The accused, Vinay Vikram Singh, 37, Vikas Mistri, 24, Vinod Kumar, 27, and Santosh Kumar, 32, were arrested during raids in Delhi, Bihar, Haryana, and Punjab.

They ran fake sites of reputed brands such as Amul, Patanjali and Haldiram by getting them registered with similar sounding domain names and promoting them through Google Ads for higher ranking and online visibility, a police officer said.

Police said during investigation they found the gang was linked to around 126 cyber fraud incidents across 16 states and duped over Rs 1.1 crore.

According to police, the matter came to light after one of the gang’s victims approached the police, after being duped in the name of a Haldiram dealership.

When she contacted on the given mobile number, she was asked to fill some forms, submit documents and pay charges for verification, security deposits etc and ended up being duped of Rs 11.74 lakh over a period of two months, the police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Anyesh Roy said that during the course of investigation, it was found that a large number of fake websites are running in the name of Haldiram, and all these websites are offering franchisee of Haldiram for huge amounts.

“It also came to our notice that these fraudsters were using multiple bank accounts and a large number of bogus SIM cards in more than 36 smartphones to cheat people. We zeroed in only after collecting evidence,” he said.