Ggm police arrests four for duping 1K people of Rs 2.5 cr

Gurugram: Gurugram Police on Tuesday arrested four persons, who on the pretext of being bank agents hoodwinked 1,000 people of 2.5 crore in the span of less than a year. The law enforcement officials have also seized various materials that only highlight how cleverly these criminals, all in their mid and late '20s, were able to dupe the people.

The Gurugram Police has seized 209 fake SIM cards belonging to Vodafone, Idea and Airtel, one card writer, 159 cloned debit and credit cards, Rs 50 lakhs, two laptops, and a Toyota Fortuner.

Those arrested have been identified as Ankur Panwar, Joginder Kumar, Himmat Singh, and Amit Kumar. It has been revealed that Amit used to first work with Amit Dagar, who used to operate the fake call centre. Dagar was recently arrested in Mumbai for cybercrime.

The four will be charged under the sections 419 (punishment for cheating), 420 ( cheating), 467 (forgery), 471 (forgery through electronic records), 34 of the Indian Penal Code along with sections 66 of the IT act. These four used to first pose as fake bank agents and take the relevant details of the people. For this, they used to collect the information from city directories.

They then used to generate the PIN numbers by generating the OTPs. Next, the information was copied using the card reader, which was then copied in the cloned debit and credit cards. By this, the criminals could easily do the transactions even in the online medium, the process that was adopted by the criminals.

Incidents of people posing as fake bank agents and duping other people is not an uncommon crime anymore. What however is of major concern to the law enforcement officials are the new techniques, processes and diverse groups, which prove to be a challenge for the officials.

The challenges faced by the cybercrime team of Gurugram Police can be gauged from the fact that there are reportedly 70 cases of cybercrimes that are registered per month. In this, 40 per cent of criminal cases still remain unsolved.

Some of the most high profile cybercrime cases have occurred in Gurugram over the years. Cases of cloning debit and credit cards are one of the most reported cybercrimes. There have also been cases of fake call centers being busted and viruses affecting the serves of the corporates. Not only residents of Gurugram but residents of foreign countries like the US and the UK have also fallen victims to these kind of cybercrimes, the operators of which reside in Gurugram.

There are plans to open one more police station that deals with cybercrimes, even though there is one cybercrime branch opened in the city.