GURGAON: Police recovered Rs 1.3 crore lost by an 82-year-old retired IAF officer to cyber cons in Feb this year by following the trail of money transferred into multiple bank accounts and arresting seven suspects allegedly involved in the plot.
Among those arrested are two sales officers of Yes Bank in Delhi’s Rohini. The staffers allegedly helped one of the coordinators — Suraj, an unemployed man in Faridabad — get access to bank accounts.
Suraj, who was also arrested in March, allegedly works for some Dubai-based cyber cons who are yet to be identified.
The others nabbed by police in connection with the case are those who allowed the bank staffers to give their accounts for transactions by cyber cons. They took a commission in return.
In Feb, retired IAF officer Jai Prakash Taank, who lives in DLF-2, approached Cyber Crime (East) police station and filed a complaint saying he had lost Rs 1.3 crore to a gang that offered him high returns for stock trading.
Taank said he was added to a Telegram group on which other users put up encouraging comments about investing with the gang. The octogenarian initially got high returns and was persuaded to keep investing.
By the time he realised it was a fraud, his money was no longer accessible and gang members snapped all communication.
An FIR was registered against the accused under IPC sections 420 (cheating) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).
Initial investigation pointed cops to an IndusInd Bank account in Rohini. This account — owned by Prakash, a labourer who lived in Delhi’s Bawana — was frozen and Rs 10 lakh that was transferred to it was recovered.
Prakash was arrested on March 9 and he told cops that he took Rs 25,000 from two Yes Bank staffers — Dharmendra and Deepak — who had convinced him to give his account details.
The duo was subsequently arrested on March 12.
“The two bankers had received Rs 1.6 lakh each for giving access to bank accounts to the fraudsters and they shared a smaller amount with Prakash,” said ACP (cybercrime) Priyanshu Dewan said on Wednesday.
Similarly, transactions to other bank accounts by cyber cons led police to arrest Pinky, her husband Vikas, and their friend Puja.
“It was in Pinky’s bank account that Rs 42 lakh was recovered. Pinky, a housewife in Delhi’s Sultanpuri, was arrested and she confessed to the involvement of her husband Vikas, a rickshaw puller, and the couple’s friend Puja, a widow who lives in Jain Nagar,” the ACP added.
The three of them were in touch with Yes Bank’s Deepak, who eventually led investigators to nab Suraj. The remaining Rs 80 lakh was recovered from IDFC Bank’s Anand Vihar branch, IndusInd Bank accounts in MP and Nasik (Maharashtra) and AU Small Finance Bank account in Gujarat’s Surat.
Police are probing the role of other bank account holders.
“Our team has successfully managed to coordinate with banks and the entire lost amount was returned to the complainant through a court,” DCP (cybercrime) Siddhant Jain said.
