NEW DELHI: Four members of a cybercrime syndicate were arrested for duping a retired DRDO scientist of Rs 40 lakh by hacking into his bank account by using a malicious application, police said on Friday, adding that the gang was involved in several similar cyber-fraud cases across India.
DCP (southwest) Surendra Choudhary said, on January 7, the retired scientist came across an unknown phone number while searching for the customer support contact of an IT company. The victim made a call on it seeking resolution of his grievance, and thereby received an APK (android package) file on WhatsApp which required him to fill out a form mentioning sensitive financial details.
The scammers, having extracted the banking credentials of the victim, gained access to his bank account for seven days and defrauded him of Rs 40 lakh, the officer said.
An initial probe of the incident revealed the fraud message originated from India’s cybercrime hotspots – Deoghar and Jamtara in Jharkhand and the Mewat region in Rajasthan and Haryana. Subsequently, a raid was conducted and mastermind Iqbal Ansari was arrested, DCP Choudhary said.
As per cops, Ansari (27), resident of Deoghar, used to flash fraudulent ads of customer care support, manage calls, and send fraudulent APK files.
Further probe led to arrests of Rajasthan natives Sajid Khan (32) and Narendra Kumar (29) and Salman Khan (24) of UP’s Aligarh, the DCP said.