The Visakhapatnam Cyber Crime Police have arrested a gang of 6 fraudsters for cheating a woman in the name of fake part-time online jobs, promising huge daily returns. The fraudsters embezzled Rs. 12.8 lakhs from the complainant.
The fraudsters have been identified as Suman Sah from Bihar, Subham Singh, Deepak Sargra, Ranveer Chouhan, Mittu La Jat, and Vikas Basitha, all from Rajasthan. Three more accused, Pradeep Choudhary, Rajneesh Gujjar, and Mazid are yet to be arrested.
The police have frozen Rs. 5 lakhs in a Yes Bank account and seized 30 mobile phones, 20 SIM cards, 26 ATM cards, 37 bank cheques, 56 fake stamps, and 8 fake enterprise name boards.
The police also stated that a total of 78 such cases were reported in Visakhapatnam alone, totalling a fraud of Rs. 2.45 crores.
Visakhapatnam City Police Commissioner Ch Srikanth, while addressing the media, said, based on a complaint received at the Cyber Crime Police Station, an investigation was conducted. The fraudsters first took details of the complainant through an URL (Universal Resource Locater) and sent her a link. She was directed to WhatsApp for further correspondence, where she was tasked to enter her details in an application. She was guided to purchase items in what appeared to be an Amazon portal.
The fraudsters initially asked the complainant to recharge Rs. 500, and UTR (Unique Transaction reference) shall be placed in the application payment link. Thereafter articles will be displayed from where she needed to purchase the virtual articles, for which she will be given incentives on every item, and she can withdraw the amount after each task.
The complainant purchased the virtual items accordingly, and fraudsters released her amount for the initial 2 tasks. She was forced to play further levels, after which the fraudsters did not release the amounts and froze Rs. 12,83,670 from her account.
During the investigation, it was found that the total amount was withdrawn through 16 transactions to various UPI IDs and 6 transactions to the Yes Bank account and 1 transaction to the ICICI Bank account. The investigating officer reached out to the concerned banks to ascertain that the given addresses were fake and phone numbers were inactive.
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Upon further investigation, the police ascertained that SIM cards were being sold on a bulk basis by Suman Shah, who had a whole racket set up. The police found that all the six accused were together conducting the fraud. All of them created fake and fabricated documents, opened current accounts in banks, and connected them with mobile numbers without the knowledge of actual subscribers. The police are undertaking a further investigation into the matter to arrest the remaining accused.
The Visakhapatnam City Police have appealed to the public not to fall for such fake part-time online jobs for quick earning of amount, where the fraudsters are taking advantage of the innocent public.
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