Dehradun: Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) team bust an online scam and arrest the main accused from Chhattisgarh's Bhilai district on charges of keeping the victim under 'digital arrest' for five hours and duping him of Rs 43 lakh.
More than 45 complaints have been filed across the country against the accused, who had digitally arrested the victim through Skype video call by posing as Mumbai Crime Branch Officer.
Private company employee fell victim to online fraud: Recently a victim from Punjab, working in a private company in Haridwar, was put under 'digital house arrest' by cyber thugs and defrauded of Rs 43 lakh. The victim lodged a complaint at the Cyber Crime Police Station in Dehradun a few days ago. The victim told police that on August 24, he received a call on his mobile, where he was told that a parcel addressed in his name was sent from Mumbai to Iran. The accused told the victim that the parcel had his name, mobile number and email ID written on it.
The caller also said that the parcel had two Indian passports, 5 kg of banned medicine and 50 grams of MDMA. The victim was told that a case was registered against him in Mumbai and a fake case number was also given to him.
During the call, the accused was told that his Aadhar card was used multiple times in money laundering cases and asked him to come to Mumbai personally or record his statement online. The victim got deceived and accepted the offer of getting his statement recorded online. He was told that Skype App is the official medium for recording statements.
After this, he was asked to download Skype App and was connected to a crime branch site of Mumbai through video call. A fake police ID card was sent in the chat and the entire investigation process was explained for about an hour, saying the entire investigation process will be recorded to present in the court and this can take from 2 hours to 2 days. During this period, he was asked to keep the doors closed and not talk to anyone.
The victim was asked to provide all information related to his bank accounts and was asked to transfer money to accounts mentioned for verification. He was told that this money would be transferred to his account later. The victim was duped of Rs 43 lakh after being under digital arrest for four hours.
"The main accused was identified by the cyber police and raids were conducted at many places. Finally, he was arrested from Bhilai and several SIM cards, mobile and a 16 GB disk were recovered from him. He has been found involved in suspicious transactions worth Rs 1.27 crore," Navneet Bhullar, SSP STF.
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