Police bust gang of credit card cheats

With the arrest of five persons, police has busted a gang that used to dupe people by seeking their credit and debit card details and then transferred their money into e-wallet accounts.

Kuldeep Sharma, a resident of Sector-17, Dwarka, approached police with a complaint alleging that Rs 44,949 was debited from his account on February 11.

"Sharma had received a call from a lady who introduced herself as an employee of SBI and informed him that he had accumulated bonus/reward points in his debit and credit card account and he can redeem these points in his Paytm account if he desires," said DCP (Southwest) Surender Kumar.
 

Thinking the caller to be authentic, Sharma shared his card details so that bonus points are redeemed in his account.

"After the conversation, he found that six transactions had been made and his account was debited of Rs 44,949," said Kumar.

Police collected details of cellphones used in commission of crime and followed the trail of transfer of cheated money.

The accused preferred duping the customers who had got credit cards of SBI since in the case of SBI, OTP remains unchanged for 10 minutes and they would get sufficient time to induce the victim to divulge secret details.

Police contacted Paytm authorities for details of all transactions held in different Paytm accounts operated by the accused.

"The mastermind of the whole operation Pramod was arrested from Sarhol, Gurgaon on February 11 and later in the day his other associates, Mohit Kumar, Gaurav Kumar and Atul Rawat were also arrested after conducting a raid on a call centre being run in Sagarpur area," said the officer.

On February 14, Varun, the seller of pre-activated SIMs was also arrested. Police also recovered cellphones, SIM cards, and registers.

"Pramod, along with one Rahul Verma, had activated a number of e-wallets on the basis of fake SIM cards. With the help of these Paytm wallets that were activated on fake and unverified SIMs, they would get the money transferred causing financial loss to the victim," said Kumar.

The victim and authorities would not be able to trace the recipient of cheated money easily as all the documents and cellphones were found bogus and unverified.

The first group of cheats would later transfer the money to the accounts of their other associates after deducting their share of the booty.

The second group of cheats were the men who were involved in renting a premises and starting a call centre.

"Men and women were asked to pose as employees of a reputed bank and make phone calls through fake SIM cards.

"Gaurav had taken a house on rent and started the call centre in Sagarpur area and had employed about seven-eight male and females employees on salaries of Rs 10,000 per month," said the DCP.

Each employee used to undergo training for three days and learn as to how to speak to the customers and were supplied a readymade written note to read and memorise.