The Matunga police busted a gang of cyber fraudsters and stumbled upon transactions amounting to nearly ₹200 crore in 20 bank accounts operated by them, one of whom was arrested from Bengaluru on Sunday for allegedly duping a city-based music teacher to the tune of ₹2.47 lakh after promising him high returns by investing in bitcoin mining.
During investigation, the police found that the gang and the arrested accused, Mohammad Jabir (31), have allegedly duped more than 240 people across India of ₹200 crore in 20 bank accounts, said a police officer.
The accounts used were either individual or in the name of shell companies, said the police officer who is part of the investigation.
The police also found that the highest amount of ₹71 lakh was transacted from Delhi, deposited in Jabir’s bank account. He allegedly took his share of ₹12 lakh and transferred the rest to a person named Imran Riyaz, another wanted fraudster in the case.
According to the police, the complainant is a music teacher in a Matunga-based school who received a message on his mobile phone through the BG-ARGOS SMS service, which read, “Join India’s No 1 crypto mining Apps you can earn upto ₹2,000 in profit daily, Guaranteed’. He opened the link and downloaded an Argo Hash application, following which he received several WhatsApp calls from a person who identified himself as Aarav Khurana who convinced the former to invest in bitcoin mining and earn sizable daily profits, said the police officer.
The victim initially invested ₹2,000 and received a profit of ₹50 in his bank account the next day. Khurana then called the victim and convinced him to invest more money to get more profits. The victim then invested ₹2.47 lakh on the app. The accused then created a WhatsApp group in which he had added more than 200 such people. After a few days, the WhatsApp group was deleted and ARGO HASH and ARGO PRO applications were found to be removed from the Play Store, added the police officer.
This prompted the victim to file a complaint with the Matunga police under sections 419 (Punishment for cheating by personation) and 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and relevant sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act.
During investigation, a team of the Matunga police cyber unit went to Bengaluru to unearth details of a bank account which was used in the fraud. They scanned several CCTV camera footages in the respective banks and managed to arrest Jabir from Bismillah Nagar area on February 18, and seized his bank passbook, three debit cards and a mobile phone.
The police found that the accused had used several WhatsApp numbers with foreign internet protocol (IP) addresses to communicate with the victims, and the bank accounts used for perpetuating the crime were also handled from foreign countries, added the officer.