Lottery fraud case: Accused used to utilise call masking

Kolkata: The accused persons in the lottery fraud case based in Pakistan, were using call spoofing and masking technique to bypass the tower location of the phones.

It has been alleged that the fraudsters had hacked several proxy servers of multiple countries to use them for making calls with the intention of duping the residents of India.

According to sources, people in Bengal were getting phone calls from multiple numbers starting with +92 and 0092. Despite the numbers bearing the International Subscriber Dialing (ISD) code of Pakistan, the tower location used to be rigged to show the calls as being made from South Africa and other countries.

Interestingly, people even used to hear Amitabh Bachchan's voice stating that they have won a huge amount of money in the television show hosted by him.

To get the money, the winners were asked to submit a processing fee. If any person showed willingness for the same, they were provided with a bank account number where the money needed to be deposited.

When people used to deposit the amount in the said bank account, it got withdrawn immediately. If any person used to transfer the money online, his or her account got compromised and money used to get withdrawn from the same.

They used to receive the money and send it out of the country using hawala channels and other illegal methods.

Golabari police station under Howrah Police had received the first such complaint. Later, CID came to know about similar cases from multiple districts in the state.

Later during interrogation, sleuths nabbed three persons including two high ranked officials of Pran Beverages (India) Private Limited. They have been taken into custody and investigation is underway.

According to sources, it is suspected that the trail of the cyber fraud is much longer than it was assumed earlier. The identities of the masterminds behind the racket are still unknown.