Kolkata: Kolkata Police (KP) has busted a racket selling pre-activated SIM cards to cyber criminals and arrested eight persons from Kolkata and Baguiati.
According to police, acting on a tip off, cops of Cyber Crime Police Station conducted a raid at a house in Kestopur area. Police found that the owner of the place Anirban Saha and his wife Deblina Chakraborty were running a business selling SIM cards which were activated using the details of other people. Police also found eight mobile phones, five biometric authentication machines and 237 SIM cards including pre-activated and raw ones.
Another person Ripan Saha was also arrested. After interrogation of the trio, police conducted a raid at a house in Beliaghata and arrested another person Sobhan Debnath.
Police conducted raids in several places in the city including Dhapa, Tilljala, Entally and Topsia areas and arrested four more persons involved in the illegal selling of SIM. The modus operandi of the racket was using a person’s biometric details to activate SIM cards and sell those to cyber criminals. During the raid, cops recovered 492 more SIM cards along with four biometric authentication machines and seven mobile phones.
The accused persons used to ask the customers to put their biometric details more than once, citing technical glitch. They used a sticky object on the fingerprint scanner to record fingerprint impressions. Later, the fraudsters used it to activate more SIM cards.
On Wednesday the Joint Commissioner of Police (Jt. CP), Crime, Rupesh Kumar informed that the racket used to sell these pre-activated SIM cards to the gangs using digital arrest, false investment offers and other methods related to bank fraud as a tool
of their crime.
These SIM cards used to be sent out of India for fraudulent purposes. Police are yet to find out where these cards used to be delivered.