Cheats won confidence of victims by speaking in their mother tongue on phone

New Delhi: Over time, the modus operandi in cheating cases have changed, with cheats coming up with new and more complex techniques.

Recently, Shahdara district police busted a racket wherein cheats would download mobile apps of different banks, feed random mobile numbers into the app to check whether it is connected to a bank account, get some basic information of that account holder from the app and then con those persons through telephone.

Police said that prime accused Abhishek Kumar Singh was the mastermind of the gang, which primarily operated from Chittaranjan in West Bengal and Jamtara in Jharkhand.

An investigator told Millennium Post that the accused, who would sit thousands of kilometres away from Delhi, would dupe people by getting their OTP number and other bank details.

He added that members of the gang were diligently trained to speak different languages, in different dialects and accents, to con unsuspecting people on phone, living in remote areas of north Indian states.

"These people were taught to speak like Delhiites, like people from Kolkata and other states, so that when they made a phone call and talked to the unsuspecting account holder in their mother tongue, the person would believe that called is from the bank," said the investigator.

The accused used to ask the victims leading questions, including basic details of the customer, after getting some other details from the mobile app of any bank.

''They basically told the name, last four digits of the account number, as they wouldn't get the full account number, and the place where the bank was situated. They would talk like bank officials and easily duped customers," said a police official.

To nabbed the accused, a Delhi Police team, led by Krishna Nagar SHO Inspector Pramod Kumar, was formed. Cyber crime experts Sub-Inspector Rohtash and SI Devendra were also a part of the team.

"The accused would call from bordering areas, due to which police would get the location of two states (Jharkhand and Bihar).

"The team was initially unaware of the location, but in Jharkhand, they used Android maps to get the route and make sure that no one knew about the operation," said a police official.

DCP (Shahdara) Nupur Prasad said that the accused used to circulate the money they stole by cheating the victims through numerous e-wallets and bank accounts to distract the investigating agencies.