Engineer, aide arrested for cheating people posing as RBI officials

A mechanical engineer and his accomplice have been arrested for posing as RBI officials and duping people of their money by asking for their bank account details. 

The accused, identified as Vikas Jha and Ashutosh, would procure the data of the would-be victims from online portals and after taking their money, would disperse the amount among various Paytm accounts. They have cheated several people to the tune of Rs 50 lakh and were arrested from Hyatt Hotel after their movement was tracked through technical surveillance.

The case came to light when the complainant,  S K Nair, had reported that he had made a complaint on the online portal, www.complaintboard.in, as he never received a cheque book for his bank account in Andhra bank.

After lodging the complaint, he received a call from the accused, who posed as an RBI official and asked him his bank details. He went onto to divulge his details after which, he received a message on his phone, that Rs 1,57,000 was withdrawn after which the complaint was registered.

During investigation, the police were tasked with a lot of difficulties as tracking the accused was difficult. 

“We obtained mobile numbers of the culprits, CDRs and developed criminal intelligence. The technical investigation led to identification of Vikas Jha. In order to trace Jha, records of around 200 mobile phones, other details of 50 handsets, around 40 e-wallet records were also scanned. Intelligence revealed movement of accused around various 7 and 5 star hotels in Delhi and Noida,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Ishwar Singh.

During interrogation, the accused disclosed that they used to get data of people from various online portals and would call them to get their bank account details and fraudulently transfer the money to their e-wallets. 

They further disclosed that they used to spend the money on shopping through online portals.

“They further disclosed that they have sold around 10 high-end phones like Apple-7, 5 Scooties, etc through online portals like OLX, Amazon, Flipcart,” Singh added.