Dehradun: Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) has arrested two men for allegedly duping an Almora-based businessman of Rs 1.36 crore in an online fraud by posing as fake bank officers.
The victim, a resident of Almora, lodged a complaint in August following which a probe was launched. Investigations have revealed that the accused used to dupe victims by posing as representatives of HDFC Securities and lured them to invest in IPOs, promising huge profits. Transactions worth crores of rupees have been recorded in the bank accounts of the accused.
As per the complaint, the victim had received a call and a message from an unknown number where the caller introduced himself as a representative of HDFC Securities and asked him to join a WhatsApp group. The victim was then asked to download a fake trading App.
To start with, he was asked to deposit Rs 1.36 crore in bank accounts provided by the fraudsters. He was then lured of high profits by applying in the IPOs. Upon starting the investment, the victim was initially shown a profit of about Rs 8 crore on the dashboard of his App.
However, when the victim found that he could not withdraw the profit amount even after several days, he complained to police. Based on which, a case was registered against the unknown accused.
The Cyber Crime Police obtained data by corresponding with the concerned banks, service provider companies, Meta and Google for information about bank accounts and mobile numbers used in the incident.
Investigators found that the money had been transferred to different accounts. For instance, Rs 48.5 lakh was transferred to the current account of a firm named Sengar Telecom. On checking the bank accounts, it was found that the accused had registered mobile numbers based on fake IDs, officials said.
After which, the STF team identified the masterminds of the fraud, Abhinav Raj Singh Sengar and Mukesh Yadav. Raids were conducted at many places to arrest the accused but they kept dodging police by changing their locations repeatedly. Finally, the cyber police team arrested the two from Kanpur.
SSP STF Ayush Aggarwal said nearly 34 complaints have been registered against the accounts of the accused in more than 11 states.
"The accused used the bank account of their firm for cyber fraud and transferred it to other accounts. Transactions worth crores of rupees have been reported in their bank accounts. Cyber crime complaints have been registered against these accounts from many states, including Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal," Aggarwal said.
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