Kolkata Police crack simbox- powered digital arrest scam
Kolkata: Kolkata Police has busted a racket of cyber fraudsters that was duping the citizens on the pretext of digital arrest and arrested a man from the Amherst Street area and seized a sim box, 2250 SIM cards, 17 mobile phones, nine routers, along with other electronic gadgets.
According to sources, during October, last year, an elderly couple of Behala was duped on the pretext of digital arrest. A cyber criminal allegedly called the elderly man impersonated an official of a courier company and informed them that they had detected narcotics in a parcel that was booked in his name. After a while, another person impersonating a CBI officer made a video call and stated that the elderly couple might get arrested.
The said fraudster directed the couple to continue the video call as a part of the investigation. Through the video call, the accused persons displayed fake ID cards of CBI and other documents. Later, the fraudsters demanded money to clear their names from the case. To evade arrest, the elderly couple transferred about Rs three crore to the bank account provided by the cyber criminals.
After a few days, when the elderly couple understood that they were duped, lodged a complaint. While probing, police traced a house at Patwaribagan in the Amherst Street area from where some calls were made. On Saturday (February 15), police conducted a raid and became stunned to see that the fraudsters had set up an infrastructure using a sim box facility, which can turn any Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls into a local call, which is illegal.
A sim box is a device in which multiple SIM cards can be inserted at once, and international calls can be made which appear at the receiver’s end as regular local calls. Through this technology, the source of the original call can be hidden, and a large number of calls can be routed,
bypassing government regulations. From the spot police arrested a man identified
as Md Amjad.
Meanwhile, Kolkata Police came to know that on Friday, February 14, cops of Bidhannagar City Police had arrested a man identified as Abir Sheikh from the Hatiara area with another sim box. It was learnt that Abir, a Bangladeshi national, was involved in the racket actively.
However, the mastermind of this racket is a resident of Tripura, identified as Biplab Hossain. Police also found a link to a Malaysian national who is likely to be involved in the racket as well. Police are continuing the probe to find out who else are involved in the racket.
