The police also arrested four more members of his gang (Representational)
Mumbai:
Mumbai Police has busted a gang of cyber criminals stealing money from people across the country by posing as police personnel and arrested its mastermind, who has studied till class 12th and has more than Rs 5 crore daily in his accounts. used to transact. an official said on Wednesday.
The mastermind Srinivasa Rao Dadi (49), who has technical knowledge despite limited education, was taken into custody by a team of Bangur Nagar police station from a plush hotel in Hyderabad, the official said.
He said that apart from Dadi, the police also arrested four more members of her gang, including two from neighboring Thane and as many from Kolkata.
Grandma pretended to run a real estate business and communicated only through the Telegram app. The police have so far sealed 40 bank accounts used by the grandmother and recovered Rs 1.5 crore in cash from them, the official said.
Explaining the modus operandi of the cyber fraudsters, the officer said that Daadi and her accomplices, posing as police officers, used to call up people, mostly women, and tell them that the courier sent by them would be sent by the police. Drugs or weapons have been found.
The caller will then ask for bank or income tax related details and say that it is necessary to verify if the courier does not belong to the person they were talking to.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-11) Ajay Kumar Bansal said most people get scared of phone calls and end up sharing their bank or IT details. The official said that the victims also shared the One Time Password (OTP) and in some cases allowed the fraudsters to take control of their mobile phones by downloading apps like AnyDesk.
After getting the key information, the fraudsters siphoned off money from the victim’s bank account. He said that cyber gangs used this method to target thousands of people from across the country.
All the money stolen by the gang went into bank accounts managed by Dadi. The official said that there used to be transactions of Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore in a day in the accounts. The official said the grandmother would then convert the money into cryptocurrency and transfer it to a Chinese national.
He said city police teams are at Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Jharkhand, Haryana and other places in Maharashtra to probe the case and more arrests are expected.
