Two held for defrauding NRI woman of ₹5.97 lakh

Two suspects with alleged links with the infamous Jamtara scammers have been arrested by the Noida cyber police station on Friday for allegedly duping several people in the last few months.

The suspects used to put up fake customer care numbers online and pretended to be executives of different companies. They would then take remote access of their victims’ mobile phones, police said on Friday. According to the police, the accused have been identified as Mohammed Riyaz, (30), a resident of Meerut and Liaq Ahmed, (33) from Bijnor. Riyaz is a post-graduate diploma holder in computer applications while Liaq has studied till class 5, added police.

“In January, a retired CISF personnel approached the police and informed that his daughter had been a victim of online fraud. She lived abroad and wanted to start an internet banking facility for her ICICI bank account. For that, she searched for the toll-free number of the bank online. After a while, the woman received a call where the caller identified himself as the bank representative. He then convinced the woman to download a mobile application called ‘Quick Support’ in order to help her. Immediately, after she downloaded it, ₹5.97 lakh was debited from her bank account linked to her mobile phone number registered with the bank,” said Triveni Singh, superintendent of police (UP cyber police).

Following the complaint, a case under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) along with various sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act was registered.

“We managed to nab the two suspects from Meerut and found that they were associated with the infamous Jamtara gang. During interrogation, the duo revealed that they worked on the basis of commission. In most cases, they called people on the pretext of providing them bank loans easily,” SP Singh added.

Police said that Riyaz got a 20% commission while Liaq got 10% for each fraud from their gang leader.

“We have identified the gang leader, who hails from Jamtara and will arrest him soon. The accused were trained for such acts. They had to call vulnerable or potential targets and convince them to download remote access tools, following which they got access to the victim’s phone. After getting the access, they would transfer the funds into multiple bank accounts that they opened using identities of people living in remote village areas,” inspector Reeta Yadav, who led the team, said.

Yadav further mentioned that the money was withdrawn by the gang leader and callers such as Riyaz and Liaq got their respective commissions.

Police said that the two accused were active for the past five years and have duped over 150 people so far of approximately ₹35 lakh.

Jamtara is a district in Jharkhand, also known as the ‘phishing capital of India’. According to the police, since the year 2015, the maximum number of cyber crimes across the country have been initiated from here.

The duo convinced the NRI woman to download an app after which ₹5.97 lakh was debited from her bank account linked to her mobile phone. TRIVENI SINGH,

SP, UP CYBER POLICE