Hyderabad: Hyderabad cyber crime police busted an online fraud and arrested two persons from Kasaragod in Kerala on Saturday. Since 2020, the accused and their associates have duped job-seekers and gullible youth across the country to the tune of 26 crore.
Deputy commissioner of police (cyber crime) Dara Kavitha on Saturday said that Noushad and Ahameed Kabeer, who were operating from Dubai, were picked up in Kasaragod and being brought to the city. The duo, under the pretext of doing steel scrap business in Dubai, were actually committing online frauds as part of a job racket.
“They were shuttling between Kerala and Dubai frequently. They employed a few persons in Dubai to commit the fraud. After the job aspirants’ money is credited into the bank accounts, they would withdraw the money in India and convert it into dollars with the help of crypto exchange platforms. The accused operated 18 bank accounts into which 26cr was credited,” the DCP said.
In Jan, police first received a complaint from a Hyderabad youth, who claimed that an unidentified person contacted him on Telegram and offered him a part-time job. He was told to carry out tasks like clicking on social media links, giving ratings for various online services and writing comments. For doing the part-time job, he was promised good returns on his investment.
Initially, he was given the promised returns. By trusting them, he re-invested money up to 9.44 lakh but they stopped paying the promised returns. It was then he realised that he was cheated.
“When we initially verified that bank accounts into which the victim’s money got credited, it was found that the account holder is from Rajasthan but the account was being operated by someone else from Dubai. The account holder said that he was paid commission by someone for allowing him to use the former’s account,” Kavitha said, explaining the modus operandi of the fraudsters.
During the investigation, police found that the accused hailed from Kerala. The two accused used to pay commission to their associates in Dubai and India, besides paying money to those who gave their bank accounts on rent. To avoid coming under police lens, the accused used VPN technology to communicate with their clients, investigators said.
Police also found that Noushad and Kabeer used to give their bank accounts on rent to earn commission. After learning that the account users were doing online fraud, they too got into online frauds, police said. However, police could not recover money from the accused. Five mobile phones, 15 cheque books, eight debit cards and two fake rubber stamps were seized from the accused.
