Gandhinagar: The police have succeeded in cracking one of the largest cyber crimes of recent times by arresting eight persons from three locations in Gujarat. The crime involved placing a doctor from Gandhinagar under ‘digital arrest’ for 103 days and extorting Rs 19.24 crore from her.
The Gujarat Cyber Crime Cell of the CID said that Yashpalsinh Bharatsinh Chauhan (24), Naaz Ibrahim Razsumra (23), Nilesh Jaman Raank (32), Jaydev Bankesh Nirmal (20), Ameer Hussain Anwar Manek (21), Shabbir Hanif Samvat (23), Rashid Ramzan Pathan (21), and Ismail Bachu Khumbiya (29) were arrested from Rajkot, Amreli and Jamnagar with the help of local police and taken to Gandhinagar.
The cops followed the money trail to bank accounts into which the victim had been made to deposit the money. Alerts were received that more than Rs 50 lakh had been withdrawn from eight of the accounts through self-cheques. Based on this information, the accused were tracked down in the three cities and taken into custody.
The money is yet to be recovered as the cybercriminals allegedly spread it over a vast network through ‘angadia’ (informal courier) firms, Superintendent of Police (SP) Dharmendra Sharma said. The search for other unknown accused persons is also underway.
At least five of the accused, masqueraded as a telecommunications official, a police sub inspector, two public prosecutors, and a notary officer, and contacted the complainant through different mobile numbers, accusing her of money laundering. They cheated her of Rs 19.24 crore in the guise of verification of her properties, the police said.
The accused told the woman that a case of money laundering had been registered against her. The accused then sent a fake letter in which the complainant had been named as accused in a purported case of violations of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) as well as under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
They warned the victim against talking to anyone about the matter, said police.
According to a statement from the State Cyber Crime Cell, “The accused persons then kept their hapless victim under digital arrest for 103 days, from March 15 to June 26, through WhatsApp video calls. (She) was told that a man in civilian dress was keeping an eye on her and if she wanted to get out of the case, she would have to provide information about all her properties.”
After the complainant provided the information about the properties, the accused persons made her withdraw her Fixed Deposit (FD), sell the gold in her house and take a loan against the gold in her bank locker. They made her sell her house and shares in her stock market portfolio, and got her to transfer a total amount of over Rs 19 crore to different bank accounts on a fake receipt of ‘Financial Supervisionary Freezing Certificate’ on the false promise that the money would be returned to her after investigation.
