Dehradun (Uttarakhand): The Special Task Force (STF) has arrested the mastermind behind the fake SIM card cartel from Manglaur police station area of Haridwar district. The accused has so far activated more than 20,000 SIM cards and sent them fraudulently to cyber thugs in many states of India as well as abroad to South Asian countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar.
The STF said in its disclosure that the accused used to go door-to-door in Manglaur police station area and lure women with fake government schemes and a set of cups from the company and take their Aadhaar cards and biometric verifications to activate the SIMs. Then the cards were sold to cyber thugs on WhatsApp OTP groups running from China and Cambodia. Through WhatsApp OTP groups operated from China and Cambodia, other accused sitting in far-off countries were activating WhatsApp and other applications on these Indian SIM cards and making WhatsApp calls or trapping people on Instagram and committing cyber fraud across India by luring them in the name of trading and investment.
In April 2024, the victim, a resident of Majri Mafi Mohkampur Dehradun, filed a case where he said he had been in contact with the alleged Kalyani, a resident of Chennai on Facebook for the last eight months. Kalyani said she used to work as a Metal Advisor and asked people to invest money on the website and earn three times the profit. She had posted screenshots of many such chats on Facebook, in which people had admitted to getting three times higher profit. The victim was also influenced by Kalyani and decided to invest. After this, Kalyani shared the link to the website with the victim whose ID was created on the website. Initially, the victim invested Rs 10,000 and Rs 23,000 came into his account within two days.
Lured by this, when he invested another Rs 25,000, the website people told him that the minimum limit of investment was Rs 50,000 for which he would have to invest another Rs 25,000 or else he would not be able to withdraw even initial capital. In a bid to save Rs 25,000, the victim invested another Rs 25,000. Despite that, he was not allowed to withdraw money. He got suspicious when he was asked to further invest Rs 1 lakh he threatened the accused with a police complaint after which he was blocked and the website was inaccessible.
During the investigation, it was revealed that most of the numbers were in the name of women in the Manglaur area and further investigation led them to the mastermind. The STF recovered about 1,816 SIM cards, two chequebooks, five mobile phones and two biometric devices from the possession of the accused.
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