With the arrest of eight persons, Delhi Police today claimed to have busted a pan-Asian network of fraudsters which operated from Pakistan and cheated Indians of their money after luring them in the name of popular TV game show 'Kaun Banega Crorepati'.
The arrested miscreants are Indian citizens, who received hefty commission from their Pakistan-based handlers. The money was routed to Pakistan through Saudi Arabia via 'Hawala' channels. Police suspect that the money might have been used for anti-India activities and further probe is underway.
"The Special Cell had been tracking inputs received from Central Agencies about the operations of a Pakistan/Saudi Arabia-based group of cheats who were luring Indian nationals over phone on promises that they had won a handsome amount of money, were thereby inducing them into making payments in Indian bank accounts before siphoning off the money through hawala," said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) S N Shrivastava.
Investigations revealed that the Pakistan-based criminals were luring susceptible Indian citizens into their trap by pretending to be calling on behalf of call centers associated with reputed brands or programs, the current favourite being reality game show 'Kaun Banega Crorepati' (KBC), he said.
"The victims used to get calls telling them that they had won a lottery running into Rs 20 to Rs 30 lakh based up on the selection of their cell-phone number in a random draw and the prize money would be paid to them on the sets of KBC itself, he said.
The tele-callers would then direct the interested person to another Pakistani number to maintain their cover of acting as professionals from a call center and telling the victim that he was being connected to the lottery processing unit, police said.
They would later call up the victim asking him to deposit a certain "processing fee" in an Indian bank account and as soon as the money was deposited, it was withdrawn by an Indian associate of this syndicate, he said.
On October 7, a Delhi-based man complained of a similar type of fraud following which a case was registered by Special Cell and investigation was taken up.
On October 13, in pursuance of investigations, raids were conducted at various places in Delhi and three accused identified as Umer Ali alias Mohd Ali (36), Rakesh Raut (30) and Ahmad Hussain (23) were held. From the trio, police recovered Rs 4.1 lakh cash and 134 ATM cards of different banks, 10 Mobile phones and a register for maintaining records of transactions.
