Breaking down geographical, cultural barriers the internet has made lives easier for the common man. However, with great comforts come great responsibilities, which is true in this case. The misuse of the internet has given way to several cyber crimes like account hacking, money frauds and blackmailing. Alarmed by the increasing rate of cyber crimes in state the Rajasthan police actively devised strategies to combat various crimes occurring over social network. Consequently, we witnessed the biggest crackdown by Jaipur crime branch this Wednesday. The cops busted an inter-state gang of con artists who extorted bank details from unsuspecting customers and siphoned off lakhs of rupees.
The cops arrested six culprits who extruded credit or debit card information from net users and later used this money to take their families for outing to Khandala and Lonawala. Five offenders were arrested from Pune and one from Mumbai. They were a native of Jamtara district in Jharkhand, but they’ve shifted their base to Pune to implement their notorious schemes.
When the police investigated the matter, they found that the criminals were involved in over 500 cyber frauds. The entire surveillance team was tracing their tracks since last couple of days. Their IP addresses and mobile phone location was tracked to confirm their location. Following their arrest, the police seized Rs 10 lakh in cash, 7 ATM cards, 15 SIM cards and 15 mobile phones in their possession.
The accused were identified as Sanjay Singhey (26), Akhtar (26), Mukhtiyar (27), Yusuf (36) and Shailesh. Sanjay and Shailesh were natives of Talegaon Dhabrey in Pune whereas others belonged to Jamtara Jharkhand. Dinesh Mandal was from Mumbai.
Post demonetization, the government is trying to link all bank accounts with Aadhaar card numbers of the users. The cons used this opportunity to extract information from the bank account holders. They called customers on behalf of the bank and asked them to share their card numbers along with CCV and other details. The accused pretended to link the customer accounts with Aadhaar card number. They used the details to transfer money for online shopping.
Alarmed by this incident, the police will now run campaigns to generate awareness regarding sharing of bank details. They’ll also run education camps to educate people on correct use of digital technology. Hopefully this will bring out the positive face of digital technologies.
