UP STF busts gang involved in duping people through bank data

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Noida: With the arrest of four men, the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh Police on Tuesday claimed to have busted a gang allegedly involved in duping crores of rupees from 1,500 people after obtaining the OTP numbers of their credit/debit cards. The four accused -- Sanjeet alias Sandeep, Baldev Singh, Tapeshwar alias Rahu Chaudhary and Gajendra alias Rahul Singh -- were held at around 12.30 pm from Ghaziabad by the Noida field unit of the STF, a senior official said.

"It has emerged that so far they have duped over 1,500 people and made over Rs 1 crore by duping them. More details are being worked out. The gang especially targeted paramilitary and Army officials," Deputy Superintendent of Police of the STF Raj Kumar Mishra said. Data of around 50,000 customers of various banks has been recovered from the gang, he said. Three mobile phones, data related to bank accounts and credit/debit cards of several people, among other documents, he added.

"The gang would procure data of bank customers from their sources and then trick gullible users over phone calls to share the one-time password (OTP) with them. Once seized of the OTP, they would transfer money from their bank accounts to their e-wallets like Mobikwik and Paytm," he said. "Later, they would transfer the money from their e-wallets to their bank accounts and withdraw it. The ill-gotten money would then be distributed among them," Mishra said. Reports of this gang operating in the region were being received by the UP Police, with a latest case in Ghaziabad where Rs 1.70 lakh was transferred from the bank account of an NDRF official without his knowledge.

A case was registered at the Kavi Nagar police station in Ghaziabad under Indian Penal Code Section 420 (fraud) and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act (cyber offences), officials said. DSP Mishra said the Noida field unit was entrusted the probe in the case and its officials had got a tip-off from reliable sources about the movement of the gang members in Kavi Nagar area late on Monday night.

"Based on the input, our team reached Ghaziabad and arrested the four men near Diamond Flyover where they had reached for a deal with their source to obtain data base of some bank customers," he added. The STF said, in a statement, that a couple of Delhi-based men known to Sanjeet provided the data to the gang at a cost of Re 1 per bank customer's data. "The data of customers had leaked from Money Mantra, a Delhi-based firm which handles data base for some banks, including some reputed multinational banks," it said.

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