Cops bust inter-State gang of online fraudsters

By Dheeraj Fartode

Crime Branch sleuths, on Tuesday night, busted an inter-State gang of online fraudsters and seized gold and cash totalling Rs 4.80 lakh. The cops arrested three young members of the gang, which operates out of West Bengal, came to the city to withdraw money. 

The accused were identified as Krishnakumar Drupdeo Mishra (28), Raja Manjeet Bhattacharya (25), and Santosh Kumar Parsnath Yadav (34), all residents of Kolkata, West Bengal. They were picked-up after Crime Branch team fast paced investigations into a complaint from a Yavatmal-based businessman, whose account was hacked by the gang for making transactions worth Rs 54 lakh. 

Staff of Crime Branch with
arrested three accused. 

According to Wadgaon Road Police in Yavatmal, Priyank Chandrashekhar Deshmukh, dealer of Tata Motors, has cash credit account with Datta Chowk branch of Bank of India. When he checked the account details on Tuesday morning, all details were okay. However, when he checked his account once again in the afternoon, he was shocked to notice that Rs 54 lakh were transferred to unknown persons. Immediately, Deshmukh lodged a complaint with Wadgaon Road Police. 

Akhilesh Kumar, Superintendent of Police (Yavatmal), ordered probe into the matter. Tracking the transactions effected through the accounts to which the money from Deshmukh’s account was transferred, the cops came to know about purchase of gold ornaments worth Rs 3 lakh at Amravati using an ATM card. Yavatmal and Amravati police co-ordinated with each other. The cops procured CCTV footage from the jewelry shop, talked to shop-owner, who informed that the accused were speaking with each other in Bengali. 

Yavatmal and Amravati police informed Nagpur Police that the accused speaking in Bengali might be on way back to West Bengal via Nagpur. They also sent CCTV grabs of the accused to Nagpur Police. Acting fasst, Nagpur City Police alerted Government Railway Police, and also drew personnel from Ganeshpeth and Tehsil police stations to launch manhunt for the accused. The searches across the city bore fruits and the accused were nabbed from Adarsh Lodge in Bhagwaghar Layout in Dharampeth area, at 11 pm on Tuesday. Police Inspectors Chandrashekhar Dhole, PI Bajirao Powar and others made the arrest. 

It came to fore that the three accused namely Krishnakumar Mishra, Raja Bhattacharya, and Santosh Yadav had purchased a duplicate sim card of a mobile company and misusing One-Time Password (OTP) they managed to siphon off Rs 49 lakh from the bank account of Deshmukh in online banking transaction. The cops recovered Rs 1.8 lakh cash and gold ornaments from the accused. 

Rs 54 lakh, gone in 12 minutes...! 

The gang used innovative technique after solid study to siphon off huge sums of money from the bank accounts of high-profile names that they collected from the website of Income Tax Department. 

The gang has a network of more than 30 members spread across India. The gang shortlists 100 high-profile names of Income Tax payers whose turnover is over Rs 10 crore per annum. After shortlisting the names, the gang sends an e-mail to ‘target’. This time, Priyank Deshmukh was the victim. During his routine, when an unsuspecting Deshmukh opened his e-mail, a virus got downloaded and installed in his personal computer automatically. 

Now, the gang was reading every detail of the victim whenever he operated the computer. After getting details of Deshmukh’s bank account and password, the accused reached Yavatmal district and set into motion second part of the operation opening fake accounts. Posing as members of a survey team, the accused collected Aadhar card and other details of a few villagers and opened 20 bank accounts in their names. 

Meanwhile, another team of the gang approached police station in Yavatmal district and lodged a complaint about missing cellphone mentioning phone number of Deshmukh. After getting copy of the complaint, the accused approached telecom operator Vodafone, submitted fake identity proof of Deshmukh, to get another sim card issued. With all the home-work done, and sim card with them getting activated, the fraudsters accessed bank account of Deshmukh online. They chose the option of money transfer, and got the One-Time Password (OTP) on the cellphone number with them. That done, they transferred Rs 54 lakh from Deshmukh’s account to 17 different bank accounts. The transaction they started at 12 pm, was successful by 12.12 pm. Thus, within 12 minutes, Rs 54 lakh had disappeared from Deshmukh’s account.