Bengaluru cyber thieves skimmed off crores from 16,000 bank accounts to lead high-flying life
- 4 people were arrested for fraudulent transactions from bank accounts
- The four used to lure customers through websites offering cash return on investments and other benefits
- The gang had with them a database of 16,000 customers' bank accounts, multiple identity PAN cards and 460 SIM cards
FollowCyber crime in the city is emerging to be quite a headache for the police. The difficulty in this business is the tracing of the crime and criminals cause in the virtual world covering your tracks becomes easier and not much is known about how to retrieve stolen items in this department.
The latest instance of cyber crime that has sent the police into a tizzy is the capture of four men belonging to Jharkhand. According to a press release by the Cyber Crime CID, Kapil Dev Suman alias Ajay Singh, Suraj Kumar, Susheel Kumar, and Biplav Kumar , natives of Bokaro were caught for the crime. The police say they have been accused of bottom-fishing.
In money speak, bottom fishing is when scamsters make false promises of making substantial money through investments and they usually tend to target people who are less educated and are in dire need of money or jobs. They advise people to buy stocks when prices are depressed or invest in companies when the business is on a low and in such cases it is difficult to say when people can recover their money.
In this case the four, through their money-minting scheme had with them a database of 16,000 customers' bank accounts, multiple identity PAN cards and 460 SIM cards to throw customers and police off their trail. The four are said to be college dropouts.
The release revealed how the gang used to skim small amounts from these bank accounts so that people would not become suspicious. They lured customers offering them monetary benefits and high return on investments.
It all came to light when on July 13, a resident of Bengaluru approached the CID with a complaint stating that on May 15, 2017 two transactions had been debited from his account fraudulently and the money was remitted to the Idea money e-wallet and SBI Buddy app.
Investigation revealed that the money landed up in a SBM bank account in JP Nagar and the gang was able to transfer money without the KYC procedure. Their search led to the identifications of 28 such bank accounts, one laptop, two mobile phones and Bokaro was identified as the base of the operations apart from Bengaluru.
Only on July 22 were the police able to nab the culprits.
A press note from the cops detail what the public need to be wary of:
One of the accused Sushil Kumar Suman had purchased over 600 domain names and he then created false websites to lure customers. Police list names like www.munafaperday, munafadaily.com, paymaza.com, futuretrade.biz and mudratrade.com. Through these sites customers were directed to enter their banking credentials to avail of the benefits and thus the gang skimmed off the money.
