The UP police’s Special Task Force (STF) has arrested the kingpin of a gang that has procured data of 14 lakh customers illegally and allegedly duped people of almost Rs 200 crore through an online scam.
Nandan Rao Patel, the accused, used to buy data from companies and sell it to those who run fake call centres. The call centres used to lure people through online shopping, insurance and other methods, thereby looting their hard earned money.
Other members of the gang, Prashant Garg, Vishu Garg, Dilip Kumar, Anuj Kumar, Arunpal, Sonu, Anoop Vihari and Veer Singh are still absconding.
STF Deputy Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Mishra said that we were constantly receiving complaints regarding cyber fraud from different cities in recent past, after primary investigations, it was revealed that some people were stealing data and misusing it.
Patel was arrested from Sector-142 Ansal Corporate Park on March 31, he was the director of Anic World Company. The company provides bulk SMS service. Suspicious things have been recovered from his possession including two mobile phones, one laptop.
Possible involvement of other companies employees
The police believe that employees of several shopping companies have been in connivance with him, He used to buy one data at 2 rupees and sell it for Rs 6 to fake call centres in, Bengaluru, West Bengal, Delhi, Noida and Delhi NCR.
Modus operandi
The gang used to aim at gullible customers of shopping sites like Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra, Paytm, Snapdeal, Shopclues, HomeShop18 etc, besides general and life insurance companies. They even used to make scam calls to innocent persons, impersonating as employees of online shopping sites and insurance companies and wanted to transfer money to them.
Then the call centres used to lure people by offering lucky draws and expensive gift for insurance and shopping, they further ask them to deposit a certain amount as registration fees in order to claim their gift.
As per a source, the data of 18 companies including Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Home Shop18 has been compromised.