Shahdara cops bust pan-India racket of OTP fraud

New Delhi: Sitting more than 1,800 km away from the Capital in Jharkhand, a gang ran a pan-India online racket wherein they fooled unsuspecting bank account holders to reveal the one-time password (OTP) of their ATM cards and then robbed them.

Delhi Police on Thursday said it has arrested four men in the case, all belonging to different states. The accused were identified as Ram Kumar Mandal (25), Purnanand Kumar Tiwari (22), Shabir Ali (27) and Surendra Singh (22), who were arrested by the Cyber Cell unit of Shahdara District police.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) Nupur Prasad said the gang operated from bordering areas of Jharkhand.

They would call account holders of different banks, while pretending as the bank manager or an employee of the Reserve Bank of India and ask the victim for complete details of their card, including card number, CVV number and OTP.

"They transferred the whole amount into various e-wallets or virtual accounts and routed the money into other e-wallet and finally they transferred the money into bank accounts and paid utility bills, recharged mobile numbers, did online shopping etc," said the DCP.

Cops said the entire fraud came to light when a 78-year-old woman from Anand Vihar area of Delhi told police that she was duped of Rs 1.85 lakh, after she gave details of her her ATM card to the person who called posing as RBI employee on March 13.

Three teams were then formed and were to different states, including Rajasthan and Jharkhand.

Details of the woman's card were obtained from the concerned bank and cops came to know that the fraudsters transferred the amount in different e-wallets.

Eventually, cops first arrested the accused Surendra Singh from Rajasthan. Based on his revelations, Shabir Ali was arrested from Sri Dungargarh in Bikaner, Rajasthan.

Meanwhile, another team was sent to Jharkhand in the search of Tiwari, who was later found to be operating from Jamui district of Bihar and arrested.

During interrogation, Tiwari revealed that Shabir Ali would get the customer details, while the details of e-wallets were given by Mandal, the leader of the gang.

Soon, cops found out that Mandal was in Jamtara district of Jharkhand and he was nabbed too.

During investigation, cops found that the accused were using 20 different bank accounts for transaction, all of which have now been blocked.