Eleven days after a railway engineer from Madhya Pradesh was arrested for defrauding people on phone, the Haryana police have arrested 3 more conspirators. In addition, the police have also seized 872 new mobile phones of different companies worth Rs.86 lakh and Rs 15.15 lakh cash from the three arrested accused.
“In a follow-up of leads generated by CyberSafe and painstaking investigations by MP, Jharkhand and UP Police, Haryana Police seized 872 new mobile phones of different companies worth Rs.86 lakh and Rs 15.15 lakh cash from three arrested accused,” a statement from cyber safe, a central government-run app which aided in this investigation said.
To date, more than 1,100 cell phones worth Rs.1.5 crore and nearly Rs.25 lakh cash has been seized from this Network which spread from Jharkhand to Madhya Pradesh to Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. A statement from FCORD the central agency coordinating the investigations said at least 25 accused have been arrested so far.
“The key nodes in the Haryana network were active members of the Balaghat WhatsApp groups run by the prime accused of the F2P Network, Hukum Singh Bisen,” the statement said.
Sudhir Narang has emerged as the key member of the gang along with Bisen. The group would call people , convince them to share their bank details, and transfer their savings into separate bank accounts and wallets. The money in these accounts would then be used to buy expensive phones. “These phones are mostly available only online and are in high demand. Bisen and his co-accused would buy phones online with defrauded money and sell it to retailers at a 10% discount thereby converting the online money into cash,” SP Balaghat Abhishek Tewari, who arrested Bisen told news 18.
While Chinese-made phones were seized from Bisen, in the Haryana raids, police said various other phones were seized. “This sub-network had a much more varied mix of mobile phones in stock, displaying no particular preference for
specific Chinese brands,” Haryana police said.
The transaction trail for the purchase of almost all of the 872 mobile phones was through UPI(unified payment interface). Officials said this mode of defrauding people has highlighted the rising importance of the National payment corporation of India in assisting Law Enforcement Agencies in preventing cyber-frauds.
The recent case came to light after Udaipur resident Aanand Sharma complained of being defrauded of 6.5 lakh. The complaint reached the app run by center called cyber safe. The app immediately flagged off the Deoghar number from which Annand Sharma got a call and subsequent investigations lead to a web of fraudsters starting with Balaghat’s Bishen.
How does Cuber safe work?
Cuber Safe is run by FCORD (Fake Indian Currency Coordination Group) under the Ministry of Home affairs. It links more than 3,000 Law Enforcement
Authorities (LEAs), including police stations, in 19 States/UTs with 18 fintech (Financial Tech) entities online and in real-time.
Fraudster’s mobile numbers are the key to CyberSafe. As soon as a victim informs the police, the information is entered on CyberSafe, and in real-time, fund flows are identified and communicated. Till now 65,000 phone frauds were reported on this app and 55,000 phone numbers and several thousand bank accounts of fraudsters identified.
Soon, NPCI will be integrating with CyberSafe, expanding the ambit of real-time prevention of cybercrime to the UPI domain, thereby amplifying its success in crime prevention, manifold. CyberSafe runs a website https://cybersafe.gov.in, which provides access only to law enforcement authorities and fintech entities.
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