Online bank fraud: Delhi Cyber Cell busts Jharkhand's gang, four held

The Delhi Police Cyber Cell busted an inter-state online fraud gang, arresting one of the biggest masterminds along with his associates. The inter-state gang operating from Jharkhand also had Naxalite links.

Four men, identified as identified as Surendra Singh, Shabir Ali, Purnananda Kumar Tiwari alias Mukesh and Ram Kumar Mandal alias Sitaram Mandal, were arrested from Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand.

The accused Ram Kumar Mandal, also known as "Hello Master" was wanted by police forces of around two dozen states. He would not only carry out online frauds but had also train hundreds of youngsters. He had also opened a school in Jamtara in Jharkhand and the gang was famous by the name of the place.

According to sources in Jharkhand, the gang had duped Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan as well. "In one of the episodes of Kaun Banega Crorepati, Bachchan had mentioned about how he was duped by a gang of Jamatara," the sources said.

The gang used to cheat people of their money after acquiring their bank account details. The police recovered a number of laptops and mobile phones, Rs 75,000 cash and several chequebooks, among other items from their possession.

According to the police, a complaint was received from a lady in March at the Anand Vihar Police Station about an online transaction fraud. "The lady complained that somebody had called her impersonating an RBI official and asked for her bank account and debit card details including an OTP (One Time Password) to link them with Aadhaar card. Shortly after the details were shared, an amount of Rs 1.85 lakh was siphoned off from two of her bank accounts," said Nupur Prasad, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Shahdara District.

A case was registered at the Anand Vihar Police Station and it was transferred to the Cyber Cell, Shahdara District for investigation. The investigating team found that the money had been transferred to several e-wallets. From these wallets, the money was further used for paying several electricity bills against Jodhpur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited from a privately-owned E-Mitra counter.

The police then arrested the counter's owner named Surendar Singh who revealed the modus operandi of his gang and also named his other associates in the fraud racket.

He further disclosed that he used to collect the bill amounts in cash from the electricity consumers and then distribute the money among themselves according to their respective shares.

"The gang leader Ram Kumar Mandal would then share the details of the e-wallets with Purnananda Kumar Tiwari and the latter would accordingly pay the electricity bills from the e-wallets. Thus, on one hand, the gang was illegally acquiring all the cash from the consumers and on the other, they were converting the stolen money stored in the e-wallets into white by paying the electricity bills", said a police official involved in the case.

At the instance of Surendar Singh, the police team traced down Shabir Ali from Bikaner in Rajasthan and arrested him. They also came to know that another accused Purnananda was operating from Bihar-Jharkhand border with the help of some Naxalite militants active in the area.

However, after weeks of sustained efforts, the police team successfully arrested Purnanda from the Naxal-hit Jamui district in Bihar and also arrested the gang leader Ram Kumar Mandal from the Jamtara district in Jharkhand. It recovered several electronic devices and some cash from their possession.

"During interrogation, we found that the frauds were using twenty different bank accounts and two of them had also been involved in similar cases earlier. We immediately froze all the bank accounts and are now interrogating them further for other possible links of the racket", the police official added.+

—With inputs from Zee Bihar-Jharkhand