Gang of cyber thugs busted, seven in police net

LUCKNOW: The cyber crime cell of Lucknow police claimed to have busted a gang of thugs involved in multi-crore fraud through e-mail spoofing, after the arrest of seven people on Thursday.

Four accused, including the Nigerian national, were nabbed in New Delhi while three persons were arrested from Lucknow’s Vibhuti Khand area, said police.

Deputy superintendent of police (DySP) Abhay Mishra, nodal officer of Lucknow Cyber Cell, said the cops had been tracking the gang for the last 20 days, after an FIR was lodged by the Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam (UPRNN) on February 7, 2019.

He said the fraudsters wiped off ₹9.5 lakh from the account of UPRNN by sending a spoof mail (fraudulent mail of UPRNN managing director Rajan Mittal) to its financial advisor Vinod Kumar Prabhakar. UPRNN officials came to know about the fraud when the financial advisor met the MD to convey him that he had transferred the amount, as asked by him through e-mail, said Mishra.

The financial advisor lodged an FIR against a firm ‘Balaji Mahila Grih Udyog’ in whose account the amount was transferred, but initial probe revealed that the account was opened on the basis of a forged identity, he added.

The DySP said cyber cell sleuths tracked the mail spoofing gang and arrested three of its members, Gayasudeen Khan, Parvez Ahmad and Ashish Jaiswal from Lucknow.

“On a tip-off, four other members, including the Nigerian gang leader Oscar, were arrested from New Delhi. The three others were identified as Mohd Naushad, Rizwan-u-llah and Parveen Jaiswal,” he added. Mishra said the gang members admitted committing similar frauds with multiple government and private firms by opening bank accounts on forged identities. He said similarly, the gang had committed fraud to the tune of ₹1.31 crore with different account holders of Oriental Bank of Commerce branch of Gorakhpur in the past few months.