Pramesh S Jain
F
ollowing an online investment fraud case, the North Division cyber crime police busted an international racket and arrested a gang of ten people including unemployed engineering students and graduates working on commission basis for the kingpins operating from Dubai.
Based on a complaint of 88 lakh worth cheating through online investment fraud,the North Division CEN Police inspector Shivarathna and his team track down the accused and raided the offices in Thyagarajnagar and Sadashivanagar and recovered 51 mobiles phones,480 SIM cards,330 bank accounts,QR codes,30 debit cards from different banks,laptops from them.
The accused have been identified as Srinivasa Reddy, 43,Akash Gm,27,Prakash,43,Sunil Kumar,43,Sai Prajwal, 38,Ravi Shankar,24,Madhusudhan Reddy,41,Suresh V,43, Kishor Kumar,29 and Obul Reddy,29.
During investigation it was revealed that these accused have been hired by the Kingpin through online offering them work from home jobs and assigned different roles on commission basis.
While some of the accused were tasked to get mule accounts,the others were instructed to facilitate transactions and ensure mobile phones and bank accounts where the money is transferred are active .
The accused were offered 40,000 commission for every one crore transactions in each account.
Explaining the modus operandi,the police said that accused make ransom calls lure the gullible people offering high returns for their investment in a shortest period of time .
The accused lured victims through stock investment ads on Facebook and WhatsApp groups linked to BRANDYWINE GROUP & ES BRANDWINE GROUP MARKETING.
Once the victim agree they will be shared a a link and added in the App to allow them to invest,while the victim can see that their investment is getting double within few days,they are lured to investment more but they cant have access to withdraw the investment .
While verifying the documents seized,the accused were involved in over 1147 cyber crime cases out of which 15 cases related to the city,the officer, said .
The police have remanded seven accused to judicial custody while three of them have been taken into police custody for further investigations.
During the raid the prime accused tried to contact their associates over whatsapp call and realized that they have been arrested after the phone was not answered .
There was a technique adopted by the accused that if the calls were not answered even after making two calls, they will delete all the conversations and call details and withdraw money from all the mule accounts,he said .
City police commissioner,B.Dayananda appreciated the police work for cracking the case and efforts are on to track down the prime accused.