The Special Task Force (STF) of the state police nabbed the mastermind of the WhatsApp OTP selling racket identified as Gaurav Sharma from Himachal Pradesh and brought him to the state on Tuesday. The accused was produced at the Berhampore Court in Murshidabad on Wednesday and has been remanded to police custody for 10 days. About two weeks ago, STF arrested nine persons from Murshidabad and Hooghly for allegedly using forged documents and collecting fingerprints to activate SIM cards to open WhatsApp accounts and share OTP to foreign entities.
The racket was active in Murshidabad and Hooghly districts which used to collect documents of people along with their fingerprints with ill motives. After collecting the information and biometric data, the accused persons used to activate many SIM cards on the basis of the documents and the fingerprints, impersonating the original persons. After the SIM cards were activated, the accused used to open WhatsApp accounts using mobile numbers and sell the OTPs for activation. The credentials of the SIM card were also given to people outside India with ill motives. Cops also found that the arrested persons are linked to other individuals in other parts of India who are directly involved in procuring WhatsApp OTPs and selling all for a price to persons, some of whom are based in Pakistan and China. After interrogating the earlier arrested persons, cops came to know about Sharma being the mastermind of the racket.
During further probe, police came to know that Sharma is connected to various international gangs that procure OTPs of different mobile applications like IRCTC, WhatsApp, Telegram and several others via various websites where he makes payments via cryptocurrency and different UPI IDs linked to Paytm accounts. Sharma used to sell those procured OTPs along with phone numbers via Telegram, or WhatsApp.