PASA charges on cyber fraud kingpin, sent to Rajkot jail

Vadodara: A cyber fraud, who morphed people’s photos and blackmailed them for extortion, has been detained under the Prevention of Anti-Social Activity (PASA). Umang Patel, a resident of Chhota Udepur, was sent to Rajkot jail by the cybercrime police on Tuesday. Patel used to run an instant loan scam and dupe people of lakhs of rupees. The police said that accused operated a racket of cheating people and extorting high interest on the loans.Patel was nabbed a few months ago after a complaint was filed against him at the cybercrime police station in April this year. Jitendra Chaudhary told cops he faced losses in his business and took a loan of Rs 2.64 lakh from an instant loan app. He paid high interest on the loan but the demand kept going up and soon the accused began blackmailing him by morphing his photograph. Patel ended up paying Rs 7.29 lakh to the accused. When he filed a police complaint, the accused threatened to file a bogus complaint against him.The cybercrime sleuths began investigating the case and tracked down some of the accused involved in the case. Patel too was traced and caught by the cops who then busted the entire racket. The cops arrested several persons including a chartered accountant. Key accused Patel used to work as an accountant in several agricultural produce marketing committees (APMC) in Chhota Udepur. He then got into the instant loan racket and even visited Malaysia to meet some Chinese people. The police said that floated several shell companies and started bank accounts in their names. He used identity documents of different persons to open the bank accounts. Patel opened over 30 current and savings account and gave control of these accounts to the Chinese gang. The bank accounts of these shell firms had transactions worth crores of rupees in just a few months. The siphoned money was converted into cryptocurrency and sent to China every day.