Police claim to bust gang of cyber cheats, 12 held

Fraudsters impersonate as Army jawanson OLX to dupe people

With the arrest of 10 people and apprehension of two juveniles, the Delhi Police cyber unit has claimed to have busted a gang of cyber cheats who used to pose as army/paramilitary personnel and later duped unsuspecting people on the OLX website. The gang operated from areas in Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The accused have been identified as Husban (22), Hasib (24), Faisal (19), Sajid (27) Sabir (25) Shezad Khan (26), Aziz Akhtar (25) and Sakir (29), all residents of Nuh district in Haryana, Yashvir (26), a resident of Faridabad, and Salim (35) from Rajasthan. Of the juveniles who were apprehended, one is from Rajasthan and the other belongs to Nuh, police said.

 The accused exploited the trustworthiness associated with the armed forces to cheat potential buyers or sellers. They also shared fake screenshots to lure their targets into scanning malicious Quick Response (QR) codes.

According to Anyesh Roy, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Cyber Crime, during investigation, the location of the accused persons was identified and raids were conducted, following which 10 of them were arrested.

“The accused used two modes to dupe people of their money. Posed as Army or paramilitary personnel, they would post advertisements on e-commerce websites for sale of their goods, mostly cars and bikes. They would even post photographs of vehicles, mostly taken from the internet, that have either Indian Army or the name of a paramilitary force written on them,” said the DCP.

“After striking a deal with the prospective buyer, they would tell the victim that the vehicle they have chosen cannot be released unless the "release amount" is paid, which they claimed is a rule in the Army or paramilitary force,” said the DCP.

 “Once that amount was paid, they asked the victim to shell out more money on the pretext of transport and handling charges, GST, etc. After receiving the money, they cut off contact with the victim. The money was deposited either in a bank account or e-wallet account,” said the DCP.

“In the second mode, the accused impersonated army or paramilitary personnel while contacting the seller of any second-hand good on e-commerce sites. Once the initial contact was established, they would agree to pay for the selected item. They would tell the target that the money is being transferred via e-wallet to their account and send them a fake screenshot generated with the help of a spoofing app,” said the DCP.

“When the victim complains of not receiving the amount, the accused would site some technical problem and request him/her to scan another QR code to get the money credited into the account. Once the target scans the malicious QR code sent on his mobile, instead of getting the amount credited, it gets debited from their account,” the DCP said.

“After the victim complains of the debit, the accused would apologise saying it was a mistake and ask the target that they would send a new QR code by scanning which they can get twice the amount to make up for the money that was erroneously transferred from the victim's account,” said the DCP.

“As soon as the victim scans that QR code, the amount gets debited from their account again. After that, they would stop responding to the victim. The SIM cards used in the crime were procured from Assam and Telangana. The inability of the fraudsters to communicate in English has resulted in their impact being mostly limited to the Hindi-speaking states,” the DCP added.