Jamtara cyber phishing gang busted, six nabbed

New Delhi, Sep 9 Delhi Police have busted an online cyber phishing gang from Jamtara in Jharkhand and arrested six persons.

The gang used to phish off money from people's accounts after obtaining the registered phone number and bank details.

The gang obtained the phone numbers and other details by registering a fake toll-free customer care number of banks or payment wallets on Google phone listings.

However, when people dialled the number, no response was received and instead they got a call from some other number from someone posing as bank executive and asking the victim to click on the link sent on his phone. The moment the link was clicked, a huge amount was withdrawn from the account of the victim.

The IMEI of the phoney Axis call centre numbers as well as Paytm numbers were sought in the investigation, and around hundreds of mobile phone numbers were found to be running in these devices.

Apparently, no calls were made on these numbers but only some messages were reflecting. These findings further intrigued the investigators, as the crime appeared to be well knit and part of some vicious nexus running pan India. Hundreds of accounts and mobile numbers were used to deliberately mislead the investigators.

One mobile number surfaced in the investigation whose CDR reflected that this person had travelled to Delhi and Gurugram in the month of June. Its Delhi based contacts were examined and a mobile number in the name of Nasim Ansari was traced, who was returning to Jamtara in Jharkhand.

"On August 21, accused Nasim Ansari was nabbed from the New Delhi railway station when he was boarding the Howrah Rajdhani Express to return to Jamtara. Fifteen new ATM cards of different banks were recovered from his possession," said PK Mishra, DCP, Rohini.

On interrogation, he disclosed that he had procured these ATM cards from one Narayan, a resident of Sohana in Haryana, for Rs 5,000 each.

On the confession of Nasim, a swipe machine and a fingerprint scanner also recovered. During further interrogation, Nasim disclosed that he supplied these accounts to other persons like Iqbal and Sagir Ansari, both residents of Jamtara. On the instance of accused Nasim, Iqbal was also arrested.

In total, six men were arrested by Delhi Police and a total of 25 ATM cards, Rs 1,78,500 and one cheque book with three blank cheques were recovered from their possession.

( With inputs from IANS )