2 held for duping over 1,000 people on pretext of linking Aadhaar cards

New Delhi: More than 1,100 bank accounts were opened at fake addresses to adjust crores of rupees embezzled through online fraud, revealed the investigation in a case in which Delhi Police arrested two persons in online banking racket from Karol Bagh and Ajmer in Rajasthan. Over 1,000 persons were cheated by the fraudsters through sim card swapping.

The investigating agency said that the accused persuade their victims to share confidential details on the pretext of linking their Aadhaar cards with their mobile numbers. Police identified the accused as Alimuddin Ansari (27), a native of Jharkhand and his associate Manoj Yadav (31) who lives in Azamgarh, UP. 81 debit cards, 104 cheque books and 130 passbooks of different bank accounts used in cheating were recovered. "Ansari was arrested from Ajmer whereas Yadav was nabbed from Karol Bagh area," police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Dwarka) Anto Alphonse said Ansari was the mastermind of this syndicate. He allegedly operated his illegal business through multiple unorganized call centres from Jharkhand. The team of Dwarka district cyber cell led by sub-inspector Arvind Kumar and Dwarka North police station team investigated the case. "Yadav's job was to provide Bank accounts to adjust the cheated amount via online fraud. Yadav targets the poor and the labour class people. He offered Rs 2,000 per account to these people if they provide him Bank account on their IDs," said Dwarka DCP. More than 1100 bank accounts were opened.

Investigator said that Ansari and his associates call up people posing as customer care executives of the telecom service provider or bank employee, and on the pretext of linking their Aadhar numbers with their mobile numbers or bank accounts, ask for card details of the Bank accounts linked with that number.

After getting all the details, they sent a message to them and asked them to forward the message to the customer care number. Once the target is convinced to send the SMS, that carried the 20 digit number of the new SIM card (which is already in possession of the fraudsters), the original SIM card with the victims are deactivated forever.

As a result, the group gets access to all the bank account details and other potential areas where a mobile number is used to receive the OTP or other security passwords. Within minutes, the accused do account transactions through mobile banking without victim's knowledge.