BHOPAL: Three men from Gujarat have been arrested by Madhya Pradesh police for their key involvement in a cyber fraud racket, which duped residents in 16 states of at least Rs 7 crore with the promise of skyrocketing their investments.
The trio including Vishal Jhala (27), Lakshman Thakor (47) and Nirav Popat (43), who hail from Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad, have been arrested by police in the tribal-dominated Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh. The action came after a man from the Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh was duped of Rs 17 lakh.
The complainant residing in the Bamhani Bazar area of the eastern MP district, had alleged that he was first lured through WhatsApp to invest Rs 17 lakh through online trading. Using a fake application software, the fraudsters first showed him that his investments were rising, but later the same app showed negative returns for the invested sum. It was after that the Mandla district native complained about it to the local police.
Subsequent investigations by Mandla district police, using the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, led the cops to four districts of Gujarat, among them Ahmedabad, Mehsana, Rajkot and Gandhinagar, ultimately resulting in the arrest of the three men from two districts.
The primary grilling of the arrested trio has revealed that they were key players of a racket.
“The three men arrested from two districts of Gujarat, represent the second rung of multi-step racket. We’re working with police teams in different districts of Gujarat to make further breakthroughs in the case,” Mandla district police superintendent Rajat Saklecha told TNIE on Tuesday.
Ongoing based on the grilling of the arrested trio has revealed that they were assigned different roles.
While one of them arranged mule accounts from farmers in Gujarat, to park the money earned by duping people across the country, the other one was tasked with getting cash withdrawn from those accounts in different parts of Gujarat.
The third man was entrusted by the authors of the racket with investing the fraud sum (withdrawn from the mule accounts) further using the hawala route.
“Probe till now has revealed that the 30 mule accounts used to park the fraud money, were the bank accounts held by farmers in different parts of Gujarat, who were promised Rs 5000 monthly in return for renting their accounts,” Saklecha added.
Detailed analysis of the money trail in the 30 mule accounts revealed that a sum of Rs 6.96 crore was parked in those accounts, by duping investors in 16 states, including Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, UP, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, MP and Telangana.
According to Mandla police sources, the kingpin of the racket (who remains unknown) was using a fake call centre to dupe the investors across the country. That was the first rung of the multi-step racket. “The fake call centre was functioning from a place in Gujarat for the last few months, but has now been shut down and might have moved somewhere else,” a cop forming part of the probe said.