On 10th April, the Pimpri Chinchwad police cyber cell in the Pune district of Maharashtra announced that they have exposed a Rs 4 crore online share trading scheme that involved the use of fake trading applications, money mule accounts (people who let others use their bank accounts to transfer money for commission), and the USDT cryptocurrency to route money to Hong Kong. Five people have been taken into custody in the past week. They have been identified as Junaid Mukhtar Qureshi (21), Salman Mansur Shaikh (22), Abdul Aziz Ansari (23), Arif Anwar Khan (29) and Taufik Gaffar Shaikh (22).
They functioned as delivery boys during the day while operating the massive racket and managed a network of 120 bank accounts that were utilized by global cybercriminals to siphon off money from victims of online share trading scams. The Pimpri Chinchwad police cyber cell was looking into a case involving a 46-year-old lady from Pashan Sus Road who was defrauded of Rs 35 lakh by cyber criminals who had promised her huge profits if she invested her money in stocks.
On 22nd February, the woman told the police that she had seen a post on share market classes and investment on her Instagram account. The message included an embedded link. Inspector Praveen Swami from the cyber cell disclosed, “on clicking the link, her number was added to a WhatsApp group ‘Schoder Academy VI’. She was then told to submit an institutional demat account form and transfer money to different bank accounts (money mule accounts) to purchase initial public offering (IPO) shares. The woman transferred Rs 31.6 lakh in phases to these accounts and another Rs 4 lakh towards charity donations. Later, the crooks stopped communicating with her.”
The cyber cell team focused their investigation on Junaid Qureshi of Tingare Nagar, who was discovered to be using an account that had money taken from the victim. Through his inquiry, the police were able to track down three other accused Salman Shaikh, Abdul Ansari, and Taufik Shaikh, all from Lohegaon who were running multiple accounts of this type and making substantial cash withdrawals from them.
According to an investigating officer, it was found that these men were providing the money to a fifth individual Arif Anwar Khan of Kondhwa who was buying Tether cryptocurrency, also known as USDT to be deposited into the digital wallets of the racket’s masterminds who are suspected to be based in Hong Kong. He stated, “We have come to know of at least 120 bank accounts in which these suspects were operating. These accounts are in the name of people known to them. The holders were being paid small amounts for their accounts to be used for receiving the money siphoned off from victim’s bank accounts.”
Pimpri Chinchwad’s deputy commissioner of police Sandip Doiphode said, “Junaid Mukhtar Qureshi who was into online share trading, first came in contact with their Hong Kong-based handler, partially identified as ‘Greg’. The latter asked Qureshi to secure mule accounts for him to facilitate their activity.” He further continued, “The money mule accounts were used to transfer money of victims of the fraud in the name of online share trading. Post-transfer, the five suspects would withdraw the cash from these accounts and route the same to their handler in Hong Kong via USDT cryptocurrency. In exchange, they received a commission from their handler.”
The law enforcement officials launched a thorough investigation after receiving complaints from residents of Pimpri Chinchwad city in Pune district who lost a total of Rs 31 lakh to the scammers, according to DCP Sandeep Doiphode from the Crime Branch. The Pune Police were able to track down and capture five men associated with the fraudulent share trading program through the implementation of sophisticated technical analysis.
Pune Police conveyed that Arif used to transmit information about these accounts to the perpetrators in Hong Kong who then employed it to obtain income from the scam. Cash withdrawals by Junaid, Salman, Abdul and Taufik were given to Arif who subsequently bought USDT and transferred it to the wallets of the masterminds in Hong Kong. “Over the last couple of months, these 120 accounts have together seen transactions of close to Rs 15 crores and have been flagged in at least 75 different cyber crime cases,” noted an official.
Authorities stated the culprits were delivery executives for a variety of courier and food delivery firms and they came from poor economic and low-education backgrounds. “These suspects are school and college dropouts and chose to do temporary jobs as delivery boys. We are now probing how they came to be working for the cyber criminals operating from abroad. We believe that operatives who make calls to the victims and do other tasks in these cyber crimes are Indians, as revealed by the probe from the Ministry of Home Affairs.”
“We have recovered from the suspects multiple debit cards, chequebooks of at least 12 banks, multiple cell phones and a cash counting machine, besides Rs 7 lakh cash,” mentioned Inspector Praveen Swami. “Probe revealed that this group worked as first and second-level operatives for the international cyber masterminds, and received up to a five per cent cut of the total transactions that were made through these surrogate accounts. Our probe will continue against such operatives and the higher-ups in the hierarchy,” added Sub-inspector Sagar Poman who is probing the matter.
The official divulged that friends and family of the five guys who were arrested owned the majority of these 80 bank accounts. “They were using these accounts by giving some money to their friends.”
The offenders in Pune were found to have Rs 7 lakh, 12 chequebooks from various banks, 8 debit cards, 7 telephones and a cash counting machine. So far, 120 money mule accounts, 80 of which are in Pune banks have been found by police to have been used in the criminal activity. They were cited in at least 75 applications for complaints that the Pimpri Chinchwad police received.
(With inputs from ANI)
