Gang that used students to swindle money from people busted

The Cybercrime Economic Offences and Narcotics (CEN) police busted a Rajasthan gang that allegedly swindled money from people by deceiving students.

The police identified the accused as Abhay Dhan Charan (19), Aravind Kumar (19), Pavan Bishnoi (18), and Sawayi Singh (21).

The fraudsters used the students to create fake bank accounts to get their job done, the police said. On September 6, a woman filed a complaint with the southeast division CEN police station stating that she had lost more than ₹12.43 lakh after unknown persons approached her with assurances of securing her a part-time job. She said that they cheated her after she transferred the amount to various accounts.

The investigation found that the account holder turned out to be a student, who confessed that he had created the bank account at the persuasion of some persons from Rajasthan. The student was told by the group that they needed the account for currency exchange purposes and that they would share a portion of their profits if the bank account were created. 

Not a one-off case

Similarly, the accused had allegedly made several students open such accounts and had collected the account holders’ passbooks, chequebooks, ATM cards, and SIM cards. The police retrieved the phone numbers of the accused from the students. Two were tracked down to Rajasthan, and the other two were accused in Bengaluru.

The duo from Rajasthan was brought to Bengaluru on October 21, and they confessed their involvement in the crime. The police arrested two others from a PG in Bommanahalli on October 20, who alleged to have said that they had arrived in the city from Rajasthan to get more such accounts from students.

On October 25, the police team recovered 19 mobile phones, two laptops, 20 SIM cards, 34 passbooks, 106 credit and debit cards, and 39 chequebooks and cash worth ₹75,000 from a house of the accused in Udaipur in Rajasthan.

Transfer of money

Further investigation revealed that the accused had allegedly transferred the money they got through fraudulent means to other accounts and then used it to buy cryptocurrency through Binance (cryptocurrency exchange). The cryptocurrency was then transferred to digital wallets, which led to the accused getting more profits and commissions.

The CEN police sent all four accused to judicial custody on October 28, and an investigation is underway to trace others involved in the case.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Bengaluru City Police Commissioner B. Dayananda warned citizens, including students, not to give out their bank credentials to others. “If you provide your bank account details to others, fraudsters will misuse it, and you will be in distress. We have heard a lot of complaints about fraudsters, luring citizens with the commission and other allurements and misusing their account numbers,” he warned.

Published - November 15, 2024 10:40 pm IST