NEW DELHI: A 24-year-old female student of Delhi University became the latest victim of cyber fraud from Mewat region. Last month, the DU student lodged a complaint with the Delhi Police alleging that she received a call from an unknown number where the caller, impersonated an acquaintance of her father, informed her that he would be transferring Rs 5,000 as requested by her father who had shared her number.
“He asked for the Paytm/ Google Pay account number on which he could send the money and the complainant shared her number,” DCP (north) Manoj Kumar Meena said. Immediately, the accused called again to the complainant and stated that instead of Rs 5,000, he had mistakenly sent Rs 50,000 and requested to revert the excess amount of Rs 45,000 to his account.
To prove his point, the accused sent her a forged SMS from a different mobile number showing that he had transferred Rs 50,000. Believing the fraudster’s version and falling into his trap, the woman transferred Rs 40,000 to the Google Pay account of the accused. When she realised that she had been cheated, she dialed the cops and lodged a complaint.
“The CDR and IMEI search of mobile numbers led to zero in the location of accused persons at Village Devseras, Goverdhan, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh,” the DCP said. After four days of continuous raids at various hideouts, the main accused identified as Saddam Khan (25) was apprehended from Devseras in the Goverdhan area of Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, police said.
According to the officer, the accused Saddam Khan used to work as a local junk dealer at his village, learned the tricks from local cyber fraudsters and started cheating people by randomly searching numbers and names on UPI payment gateways following the same modus operandi.
Modus operandi
The accused impersonated an acquaintance of the victim’s father, told her that he would be transferring ` 5,000 as requested by her father and asked for the Paytm/Google Pay account number. Later, sharing a fake message of Rs 50,000 transfer and he requested her to return Rs 45,000, which the victim did.