10 arrested for tele-banking fraud

HYDERABAD: Punjagutta police on Monday busted a gang specialising in duping tele-banking customers and arrested 10 persons, including a Nigerian and an employee of cellular phone service provider, Airtel.
On June 2, Anil Sikka, CEO of a power and telecom infrastructure firm, lodged a complaint with Punjagutta police alleging that Rs 5 lakh had been siphoned off from his bank account with the SBI Dwarakapuri colony branch.
Police registered a case and a special team was formed to crack the crime. After studying Anil's bank account details, police discovered that the money had been electronically transferred from his SBI account to one Kushal Chaterjee's account, in ICICI Bank's MVP Colony branch in Visakhapatnam.
After tracking Kushal's mobile phone, police zeroed in on the entire gang at Kanakadurga lodge in Panjagutta on Monday morning. Along with Kushal, cops arrested Sunny Uce Uzoma, a Nigerian national residing in Bangalore, Bikas Shaw, A Bhaskar Rao, Bipin Kumar Singh, Dilip Kumar Tanti, Shanker Sahu, Arun Kumar Mishra, Lukman Ali and D Venkateshwar Rao.
The gang members have confessed that had been obtaining bank account details of the victims from one Tony based in Nigeria. Using those details, the gang would first prepare a fake identity proof like a driving licence in the victim's name.
They would then call up the mobile phone service provider saying that the victim's phone had been lost and request for the SIM card to be blocked.
However, when the card is yet to be blocked, the gang-members would approach the service provider with the fake ID proof and obtain a duplicate SIM card.
"Most of these transactions are done late on Saturday evening when the staff at the service provider's office are too busy processing requests to closely check the forms," deputy commissioner of police (DCP), West Zone, M Stephen Ravindra said.
After obtaining the duplicate SIM card, they would call the bank operator saying that they had forgotten their telephone banking PIN and request them to send a new PIN. Given that the gang would provide the stolen bank details of the victim, the bank readily sends a new PIN to the registered mobile phone using which, the fraudsters immediately transfer cash into their associate's account.
"Tony obtains bank account details of people using various techniques including phishing. His key agent in India is another Nigerian, Sunny operating from Bangalore. Sunny coordinates with other agents spread across India," Stephen Ravindra said.
Using this method, the gang has duped several customers to the tune of Rs 1.5 crore over the last one year. Police have recovered 22 ATM cards, 3.5 tolas of gold, Rs 1.1 lakh in cash, Sunny Uzoma's passport, nine duplicate SIM cards, two laptops and 15 cellphones from accused.
Among the arrested, Venkateshwara Rao is an Airtel employee in Visakhapatnam and police have arrested him under the charge of criminal negligence and abetment of crime. "Rao gave away a duplicate SIM card without following proper procedure," the DCP said.
The arrested persons were produced in court and remanded in judicial custody.