KYC update fraud: Three cyber criminals held from Gujarat, Jharkhand

New Delhi, June 17 (IANS) Three cyber criminals, who used to cheat people on the pretext of updating their bank KYC, were arrested by the Delhi Police from Gujarat's Surat and Jharkhand's Giridih, an official said on Friday.

The accused were identified as Pravesh Mishra, Brijesh Kumar, and Kailash Kumar Mandal.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Shahdhara, R. Sathiyasundaram said a case was registered on the complaint of a person in which he alleged that he received an SMS message containing some link from an unknown mobile number on his phone on March 11, asking him to update his PAN number immediately or his HDFC net banking will be blocked.

The complainant clicked on that link and thereafter told the OTP to the accused person/caller from unknown mobile number and a total of Rs 10 lakh were deducted in two tranches i.e Rs 4,99,990 and Rs 4,99,990.

Based on the complaint, the police registered an FIR under Section 420 of the IPC against unknown people and set up a team to solve the case.

The team of Cyber Cell analysed the details of the accused's mobile number, bank accounts and Facebook details, and came to know that the accused withdrew the cash amount from different places. The team also analysed the transaction details of the victim's account and found that the cheated amount had been transferred directly into two credit cards of IDFC and SBI Bank which were both found registered in the name of accused Mishra.

Further technical investigation revealed that the fraudsters' network is based in Surat. A Delhi Police team subsequently conducted a raid at Surat and nabbed the account holder and main accused from Surat -- Mishra and Brijesh Kumar.

During further investigation, it was found that 30 per cent of the cheated amount was used at Gujarat by accused and rest 70 per cent was transferred to Giridih through different modes. Subsequently, the police team conducted a raid at Giridih and succeeded in nabbing main accused Mandal.