The cyber crime branch of the Rajasthan Police has cracked a large interstate gang that commits nationwide Rs 500-crore fraud in the name of investing and trading in the stock market.
The police team has achieved a great success in arresting the main mastermind of this Rs 500 crore mega cyber scam from Pune, Maharashtra. The kingpin Yuvraj Satish Mudaliar (35) has been brought to Jaipur on a transit warrant.
The accused used to create fake companies on the pretext of granting loans and possess people's documents for opening mule bank accounts in their name to dispose of the fraudulent amount.
Additional Director General of Police Cyber Crime Vijay Kumar Singh said that the complainant Sendharam Chaudhary had filed a written complaint of cyber fraud of Rs 16 lakh at the State Cyber Crime Police Station.
The victim had told that he was added to an online WhatsApp group named 105 IND stocks Adv, where he was cheated by luring and giving false assurances of making excessive profits through investment and trading.
When the technical team of the police conducted a thorough analysis of the chats and data of the said WhatsApp group, it was revealed that through this group alone, a huge cyber fraud of about Rs 500 crore has been carried out from people from different parts of the country.
What was the modus operandi?
The functioning of this vicious gang was highly planned. Cyber criminals used to send messages to the common people through social media and WhatsApp groups luring them to make big profits from trading while sitting at home.
Initially, to win the trust of the victims, they also transferred some small amount of profit in exchange for investment to the victim's bank account. When the victim had full confidence in the system, he would invest his savings and a large amount of money out of greed. As soon as the large fund was transferred to the fake accounts of the criminals, the cyber thugs would remove the victim from the WhatsApp group and delete the group and disappear.
Special team formed to crack the network
The Cyber Crime Branch head Vijay Kumar Singh set up a special team of State Cyber Crime Police Station under the direction of Deputy Inspector General of Police Cyber Crime Shantanu Kumar Singh. Superintendent of Cyber Crime Police Sumit Meharda led the team on ground.
The team conducted an in-depth technical analysis of dozens of bank accounts, WhatsApp group data and mobile numbers used by the criminals. After this, the team laid a trap and arrested the mastermind of this entire syndicate, Yuvraj Satish Mudaliar.
Money used to be rotated in crypto through mule accounts
The main accused Yuvraj Satish has disclosed the working of his entire network during police interrogation. He said that he used to run fake finance companies in the names of Grace Finance, Positive Balance and Guru Finance in Pune and used to give loans.
In the guise of passing the loan, he used to get important documents like PAN card, identity card, bank statement and salary slip directly from people. Later, by misusing these documents, he opened mule Bank accounts in their names and gave a commission of Rs 10,000 to the account holders in return. He used to withdraw crores of cash amount deposited in these accounts through ATMs. Then using the hawala network he used to buy crypto currency (USDT) using his Binance Wallet sell it abroad, getting a direct 5% commission on the total sale.
Vivek Shukla is a management graduate who has worked in corporate worked for 20 years and is now pursuing his passion — news.
