International Cybercrime Racket Busted In Odisha’s Rourkela, 6 Arrested

Rourkela: Busting an international cybercrime racket, the police in Odisha’s Rourkela Saturday arrested six people allegedly involved in fake stock market App fraud and seized incriminating materials from them on Saturday.

The syndicate allegedly duped people in different parts of the globe to the tune of Rs 67.70 lakh with fake stock market applications, police said.

The prime accused, identified at Ujjwal of Bhilai in Chhattisgarh, along with his acquaintance Pankaj Rao supplied 200 Indian SIM cards and mule-rented bank accounts to foreign nationals.

Rourkela SP Mitrabhanu Mahapatra told media that a case under Sections 419, 420, 465, 467, 471 and 120B of the IPC and 66C/ 66D of the IT Act has been registered. “We have identified the ringleader of this international cyber-fraud syndicate. He is a foreign national,” he said.

Acting on a complaint filed by a senior Central government officer, a team of investigators with assistance from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (14C) and State Crime Branch conducted the investigation. They found more than 210 complaints made from across India as per JCCT Management Information System (JMIS) of 14C, MHA, data.

The complaints were made mostly from Bihar, Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, NCT of Delhi, Kerala, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

The team found the miscreants used mule accounts and digital advertisements and the IP addresses of log-in to the accounts showed Cambodia and Abu Dhabi. They procured the SIM cards in the name of one Sandeep Jain and made a fake mobile trading application, Indira Securities which displayed stock prices in real and fake returns. The app stopped pay-out after initial returns.

Police have retrieved the data of the fake Indian SIM cards used from Cambodia for the scam and have requested the service providers to take necessary action. “We are informing different law enforcement agencies of the country about the crime,” said the SP.