19 online swindlers trapped in a month-long operation by Delhi Police | Delhi News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: In a crackdown on cybercrime gangs targeting residents of Delhi and other states, Delhi Police have arrested 19 individuals after a month-long special operation. The suspects were involved in fraudulent activities, including online stock market investment scams, fake work-from-home schemes propagated through the Telegram messaging platform and dissemination of phony customer care numbers.
The breakthrough came after two dozen police teams simultaneously raided a number of locations encompassing Mewat to Jharkhand. According to Rohit Meena, DCP (Southwest), the individuals were arrested from Deoghar, Giridih and Dumka in Jharkhand, Rajgarh and Sehore in Madhya Pradesh, Samastipur in Bihar and Ajmer and Jodhpur in Rajasthan. “We had received over 148 complaints of fraud involving over Rs 6 crore,” said Meena.

Police arrested a 19-year-old woman for allegedly using morphed influencer accounts and artificial intelligence to generate explicit images, which were then sold to unsuspecting buyers online. A cybercrime module was also busted in Mewat and two suspects, Sahil and Varis, arrested there. The duo used to impersonate army personnel and target people who listed their properties for rent on popular real estate websites. The complainant in this case was an Air Force officer who was cheated of Rs 2.3 lakh when he wanted to rent out his house. The accused used forged IDs, WhatsApp messages and phone calls to convince the victims. Twelve complaints from various states were found linked on the MHA portal, and over Rs 18 lakh were unearthed in suspected accounts.
Another module was engaged in fake customer services. The kingpin of this group, Kundan Kumar Das, was arrested from Jharkhand. The complainant, also an army personnel, was cheated of around Rs 2 lakh when he responded to a fake customer care number. The accused used to take remote access of the victim’s mobile phone and siphon off money from their bank accounts. The investigators found 16 complaints from various states on the MHA portal and over Rs 1.1 crore was unearthed in various accounts.
One of the busted modules duped people by offering fake online investment opportunities. Prime accused Chetan Naidu was arrested from Mumbai. The complainant in this case had lost Rs 18 lakh after being assured of good returns on online investments in the stock market. This particular module had 40 complaints from across the country linked to it on the MHA portal. Police unearthed Rs 3.27 crore in the fraudster’s account. Three people were arrested in the case.
There were also some arrests in the case of a Union ministry translator who was defrauded by a sham work-from-home agency. The agency obtained the translator’s bank details through a fraudulent link and withdrew funds worth lakhs from his account instead of paying him for his work.