Mumbai: An IITian and the operations manager of a private bank are among six individuals arrested by the cyber police in connection with a Rs 1.12 crore digital arrest scam. According to investigators, all six accused were tied to the financial trail, which involved receiving illicit funds, managing mule accounts, supplying active SIM cards, and executing withdrawals.In July-Aug, a 68-year-old retired professional from Dahisar was duped in a digital arrest scam over the span of two weeks. The elderly man received a phone call from a person posing as a telecom authority representative. He claimed that the complainant’s Aadhaar card had been misused and the call would be transferred to the crime branch.Further, a fake cop, Vijay Khanna, convinced the complainant that an offence had been registered against him in Delhi for misuse of SIM cards. He added that the complainant’s Aadhaar and PAN card copies had been found during a raid related to money laundering. The senior citizen was threatened with public humiliation. Over a WhatsApp video call, which had a police logo, the scammers then asked him about his wealth and instructed him to liquidate his fixed deposits. The senior citizen was warned that if he confided in his family members, they would be arrested too.Fake documents with “Govt Affairs, Supreme Court of India” mentioned on the letterhead were sent to him over WhatsApp. The senior citizen was asked to report his location every two hours and was coerced into making money transfers. Two weeks later, when his daughter discovered the fraud, Khanna dared her to approach the police.After the family complained on the cybercrime helpline, an FIR was registered at the North Cyber Police station. A team supervised by DCP Bajrang Bansode, comprising senior inspector Pramod Kamble and inspector Sunil Lokhande, analysed the money trail. A chunk of the senior citizen’s funds had been transferred to the bank account of a gold trading firm.“The mobile numbers of two directors of the firm were linked to the bank account. SIM cards for both the numbers were with an individual named Tariq Momin who has been arrested,” said a police officer. Police suspect Momin was involved in getting mule accounts opened. One of the directors of the gold trading firm, Rakesh Jain, was also arrested.Momin inserted both the SIM cards in two new handsets and handed them to Shakar Tyagi, an operations manager with a private bank. The handsets were used for receiving OTPs.Police said Tyagi, along with an IITian, G Gohel, was involved in providing access to the handsets to other scammers. Gohel has a BE from IIT Delhi and is a web developer. In 2021, he was booked in a separate case of cheating by Bandra police.The handset with Jain’s SIM was eventually provided to a co-accused, Chintan Desai, who flew with it from Mumbai to Delhi and then travelled to Bijnaur in UP. The money received in the gold trading firm’s account was partly withdrawn and partly transferred further to other mule accounts from Bijnaur. Tyagi, Gohel and Desai were arrested along with another associate, Ajay Sharma.
