Four persons have been arrested for their alleged involvement in mobile internet banking fraud using duplicate SIM cards, police said today.
Acting on a complaint of one Bhushan Kumar Jain in August, police arrested Sonu Dubey (27), Ravi Shankar Pandey (40), Bunty (22) and Pawan (19) for duping people by getting duplicate SIM of their mobile numbers issued after getting the original one blocked and then siphoned off money from their accounts using internet banking.
According to the complaint, Bhushan's mobile number all of a sudden became inactive on August 17 following which he got a duplicate SIM card issued.
However, the duplicate SIM card also got de-activated on August 19 and the following day Bhushan was informed by Krishna Nagar Branch of Axis Bank that Rs 5,78,000 has been withdrawn from his bank account through internet banking, Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Ajay Kumar said.
Up on investigation police nabbed Pawan, and later Sonu was traced and arrested. On his instance, Bunty, who used to block phone numbers of the targeted account holders and got new SIM card issued of the same number on fake documents, was nabbed. These SIM cards were then used to receive OTP (ONE TIME PASSWORD) from the banks to siphon off the money, said Kumar.
The fourth gang member, Ravi Shanker Pandey was also arrested. His role in the gang was to procure ATM cards of accounts in which the siphoned off money was transferred, he said.
During interrogation, police learnt that the mastermind of the gang is one Mohd Mirza Ali who lives in Mumbai. He has access to login passwords and transaction passwords of many account holders of different banks.
According to the police, Ali passes this information to one Pritam Mishra, a resident of Delhi. Mishra then collects ATM Cards with passwords of accounts in which money from target account was to be transferred.
Efforts are on to arrest other two accused Mirza Ali and Pritam Mishra, police said.
