MUMBAI: In a new modus operandi in cyber-crime, a group of cyber fraudsters cheated a music teacher after promising high returns by investing in bitcoin mining. The police arrested a 31-year-old Karnataka resident and during investigations found the gangs financial transactions of over Rs 200 crore in 11 bank accounts belonging to the accused gang. Transactions of Rs 189 crore, were done from only one account since October, have been found.
The complainant, had lodged a complaint with the
Matunga
police station for cheating. On August 12 last year, the complainant had received a text message on his phone which asked him to invest in bitcoin mining. He was promised a daily return on the investment. The teacher downloaded an app, given in a link in the text massage and invested an initial amount of Rs 2,000. He told the police that the next day, Rs 50 as profit was deposited into his account. Police said that during this period, he received WhatsApp calls from various mobile numbers. One caller, Arav Khanna, a sked him to invest a big sum for high profit. The profit continued crediting into his a ccoun t and the teacher later deposited a total of over Rs 2. 47 lakh in the app for bit- coin mining. More than 240 persons in India are suspected to have been cheated.
During this time, the a ccused formed a WhatsApp group and added over 200 investors in the group. A few days later, the app was removed from
Play Store due to ‘technical reasons’ and the WhatsApp grou p was also deleted by the accused.
All attempts to contact the callers or get his money back went in vain. This is when the complainant realised he was cheated. Under the supervision of Zonal DCP Vijay Patil, ateam led by senior inspector
Deepak Chavan worked on the case. They went to Bengaluru and tailed the accused near a bank and scanning CCTV footage. On Friday arrested Mohamm ed Jabir, a Bengaluru resident. PSI
Rajabhau Garad
and colleagues recovered a bank passbook, three debit cards and a mobile phone from him. Police found that the operators of the n umbers, were using Dubai-based IP addresses. The accused had also used fake IP addresses of China and Singapore.
Financial transactions of over Rs 200 crore have been found in differ ent bank accounts in the crime, said police “We have found a bank account from where Rs 70 lakh was withdrawn sometime back. We are searching for other accused members,” said Garad.
Stay updated with the latest news on Times of India. Don't miss daily games like Crossword, Sudoku, Location Guesser and Mini Crossword. Mateen Hafeez, special correspondent at The Times of India in Mum...
Read MoreMateen Hafeez, special correspondent at The Times of India in Mumbai, reports on terrorism, underworld, cybercrime and organized crime syndicates. He also writes about the jails in Maharashtra and focuses on human interest stories. He has covered the Ghatkopar bomb blast, Vile Parle bomb blast, Mulund train blast, train serial blasts in 2006, 26/11 terror attacks and Pune's German Bakery bomb blast. He has a special interest in Urdu fiction written by Ibn-e-Safi.
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