With the arrest of three persons, including an employee of a private bank, the Crime Branch of Delhi Police today claimed to have busted an Uttarakhand-based gang which allegedly duped people on the pretext of winning foreign lottery.
The accused, identified as Furhan Khan (25), Imran Khan (25) and Mohammed Moin (26), allegedly used to contact people through e-mail or SMS, and announce that they had won lotteries worth a hundred thousand pounds, equivalent to more than a crore in Indian currency, said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav.
He added that the police have been trying to track the gang since October last year. However, the kingpin of the gang, identified as Sadaqat, is still at large.
According to the police, the presence of the gang came to light on October 14, 2014, when a middle-aged nurse approached the police and told them that she received an e-mail in which she was told that she had won 1,00,000 pounds in a lottery.
A few days later, another man, who claimed to be an RBI official, allegedly e-mailed the complainant and asked her to deposit a 'currency conversion tax' of around Rs 8.64 lakh to withdraw the prize money.
The unknown person also instructed her to deposit the amount in four different bank accounts - pertaining to branches of a particular private bank in Delhi, Rudrapur and Surat - in equal proportions. When the complainant did not get any response for around 12 days, she realised that she had been cheated and approached the police.
When local cops failed to work out the case, it was transferred to the Crime Branch on July 1 and a specialised team was formed, said Yadav.
The police managed to track down the holder of one of the bank accounts to which one-fourth of the purported conversion tax was deposited and Furhan Khan was arrested on September 16 from Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, said a police official.
Within two days, the police arrested the other accused - Imra Khan and Mohammed Moin. All three of them have been booked under Section 420 (cheating) of IPC and relevant sections of the law, said the official.
During interrogation, the trio revealed that Moin works as a field officer - tasked with finding clients for personal loans - in the concerned private bank. He is posted at Rudrapur from where the gang operated.
He, along with Imran, roped in Furhan, who is a customer in the same bank, into the plan and decided to the share the booty equally after paying off a major share to Sadaqat.
"Investigation is underway. The police are trying to track Sadaqat," the official added.
