ROURKELA: Police arrested a cyber fraud from Haryana and produced him in court on Thursday on charges of duping a professor of the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) of Rs 45,000.
Accused Salil Khan alias Emran (22) of Haryana’s Nuh district had allegedly duped the victim, Dinabandhu Bag (53), in June this year, said police.
Rourkela SP Nitesh Wadhwani on Friday said on June 13, Salil called the complainant on an unknown number posing as his friend Avinash Bagade of Gondia. The accused impressed upon Bag that he needed to urgently transfer money for treatment of his friend Zakir Khan but was facing technical issues. He even sent a fake SMS alert to the victim’s mobile number which falsely indicated that `45,000 was credited to his SBI bank account.
The SP said Bag didn’t verify the SMS from the SBI and tried to send the amount through UPI payment system to two numbers provided by the fraudster. When the transactions failed, the victim transferred Rs 10,000 and Rs 35,000 to an account of India Post Payments Bank in two attempts on the instruction of the accused. Subsequently, Bag checked the statement of his SBI account only to realise that he has been defrauded.
Wadhwani said investigation revealed that the cyber fraud gang led by Salil and operating from Nuh targeted and cheated gullible people using duplicate version of the PhonePe App.
Using the fake App, the gang members would create false screenshots of UPI transactions and fake credit messages and send these to the victims through WhatsApp or SMS, misleading them into believing that payments had been made to them.
Accused Khan was booked under sections 318 (4), 319 (2), 338 and 3 (5) of BNS along with sections 66 (C) and (D) of IT Act. Efforts are underway to trace and nab Khan’s associates Salman and Tahir who are also from Nuh district.
The SP advised people to always verify any UPI payment or bank credit message through official banking apps or customer care numbers and avoid trusting screenshots or SMS alerts from unofficial sources.