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Patna: Economic Offences Unit (EOU) of Bihar police on Monday claimed to have busted a cyber gang with foreign links that duped people of their hard-earned money.
About The Case
The gang’s kingpin Harshit Kumar and his five associates were arrested from Supaul and Vaishali districts of Bihar and a number of mobile phones, SIMs and other electronic gadgets were seized.
The operation led by a DSP rank officer began on Saturday morning and concluded late on Sunday. ADG, EOU, Naiyyar Hasnain Khan said that the gang led by Harshit was in touch with fraudsters operating from several countries, including Vietnam, China, Germany and Cambodia and duped people of their hard-earned money.
The 21-year-old gang’s leader had set up altogether eight mobile phone set boxes purportedly procured from China and Vietnam in his house located at Gauspur in Supaul district. He has set up a parallel telephone exchange with the help of these set boxes. “The VOIP calls were easily converted into local calls by fraudsters to contact gullible people in Indian states,” ADG, EOU, said.
The cyber scam centres located in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia converted VOIP calls into local calls to contact the victims in India through various social media platforms. Preliminary investigation revealed that more than 10,000 fraud calls were made per day with the help of these set boxes.
The parallel telephone exchange has duped the country's telecommunication ministry of huge exchequer. “We are trying to estimate the loss of revenue to the Government of India by a fake telephone exchange,” ADG, EOU, said.
During investigation, it came to light that Harshit contacted a cybercriminal, Sumit Shah, a resident of Pakur in Jharkhand, to procure 1000 SIMs in March this year. Sumit used to obtain SIMs from Sultan, who supplied 400 SIMs to the former. Both Harshit and Sultan met each other near Hajipur in Vaishali district on several occasions.
Revealing the modus operandi of the gang to obtain SIMs, ADG, EOU said that Sultan used to organise camps in rural areas and collected their documents in the name of providing them benefits of several government welfare schemes. Unsuspecting of any foul play, people in rural areas provided him documents, which were later used to get SIMs issued from telecommunication service provider companies.
The gang has spread its network in states and Union Territories, including Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Delhi and Odisha. Police have collected evidence of its links with cybercriminals operating in UAE, Cambodia, Thailand, Hongkong, China, Vietnam, UK and Germany.
Police have collected evidence of huge transaction of money in bank accounts of the members of the gang. The gang’s kingpin Harshit has his Crypto currency account, which is under scrutiny of the investigating agency. The details of bank accounts of arrested members of the gang have also been collected by police for further investigation.
