The Matunga Police has arrested two alleged cyber criminals for duping people in the name of bogus job offers. Their modus was to target people via employment portals, luring them with fake job offers and asking them money in the name of procedure and formality.
The matter surfaced in front of the police when a 60-year-old Anil Shirasagar, a resident of Dadar approached the police last year. Shirasagar, who lost his job during the COVID-19 lockdown, was looking for a job opportunity and for the same, he created a resume and a profile in naukri.com, an employment portal.
The complainant grew suspicious after accused asked for money repeatedly
Immediately after, he received three phone calls from three different numbers who claimed to have 'seen' his resume and wanted to offer him a 'good' job offer in a company based out in Dubai. With this reason, they (the callers) started asking money from Shirasagar in the name of formalities - which totalled up to Rs. 1.78 lakhs.
Suspecting how they were repeatedly asking for money from him, he asked them to return all his money. As expected, they started dodging his request, and eventually stopped responding to calls. All the three numbers went to 'switch off' mode, said the police on Monday.
Police tracked bank account details, got call records for numbers
The police after listening to the victim's ply, registered a case against unknown persons, noted down the mobile numbers from which they contacted the victims and parallely began the investigation along with the team of cyber police officers.
They started by getting the Call Data Record (CDR) and Subscriber Data Record (SDR) of the three mobile numbers, along with its tower location. Then they tracked down the bank account details to which the victim had transferred money frequently. These details collectively pointed out to two locations - one in Greater Noida and another in Lucknow, both in Uttar Pradesh. Along with the local police in both the areas, the team of police of Matunga managed to track them and arrest them.
The police seized ATM cards, bank books, gadgets from the accused | FPJ
Accused registered themselves as employer in portal
The two accused are identified as Vikas Kumar, 24, arrested by Surajpur Police in Greater Noida, and Rishabh Dube, 23, arrested by the Sushant Golf City Police in Lucknow.
According to the police, the two accused registered themselves as 'job providers' in the aforementioned employment portal from where they picked up resumes from their potential victims and duped them.
Accused had several cases against them in multiple states
During the investigation, the police found that these two had several cases registered against them across the country in states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Gurugram, etc - with the same MO - in the lines of cyber crime.
A case has been registered against both the accused under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (fraudulently and dishonestly using genuine documents), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 34 (common intent) of the Indian Penal Code and 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
They were presented in the court by the Matunga police, which remanded them to police custody till February 28, for further investigation.
