Info, bought for 20-50 paise per account holder, was divided into categories and senior citizens, women were considered easy targets; kingpin is in Mumbai and yet to be arrested
The Delhi Police have busted a gang of cheats who used to fraudulently transfer money from victims' accounts to various e-wallets after luring them into revealing their financial details over the phone. Two persons, identified as Ashish Kumar Jha and Puran Gupta, have been arrested in this regard.
The matter came to light when SC Rastogi, 80, approached the police stating that he was cheated of Rs 146,000. Revealing more details, Rastogi said he received a call from someone in Citibank. The caller told him that his credit card had been blocked and some details, such as card number, card holder's name, date of birth, needed to be verified before the card could be reactivated. Within minutes of the call, as many as 16 transactions were done from Rastogi's account and money was transferred to various e-wallets, including PayU, Paytm, Olacabs, Mobikwik, RPSL, and Vodafone.
The complainant noticed the transactions the next morning. "Our family has been a loyal Citibank customer for the last two decades. We have three credit cards of the bank, but when we approached them, they did not help us at all. Then we approached the police, who asked us to write mails to the e-wallet companies, and they wrote some mails themselves, so that some of that money could be retrieved," Rastogi's daughter-in-law said.
In 2010, Gupta started a firm in the name of 'First Step Services and Solutions'. On paper, the firm was created for data collection, data entry, data market research, and online promotion. It was registered with Just Dial. People would call Gupta and seek data in exchange of money.
Accused Jha, who was arrested earlier this month, told the police that he sold the data he collected to Gupta, who would then pass on this data to criminals in the the fake call centers. "The data of account holders was divided into various categories, depending on the withdrawl limit. Senior citizens and women were kept in the category of easy targets. Students applying for scholarship, companies using whatsApp and Facebook for promotional activities, were separate categories," DCP (south-east) Romil Baaniya said.
The cop added that the data was purchased for a nominal amount of Rs 20,000-50,000 or 20-50 paise per account holder.
It was later revealed that the accused were in possession of information of around a crore people in the country. The kingpin of the gang is based in Mumbai and is yet to be arrested.
THINGS TO REMEMBER
- Agencies/banks: Need to upgrade safety mechanism to safeguard personal data.
- Police: Need to register FIRs promptly.
- General Public: Need to immediately inform banks and must not share the One-Time Password (OTP) or CVC number with anyone.
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