NOIDA: “Your system has been compromised” -- a warning message was sent as an ‘Email Blast’ to American citizens by fraudsters sitting thousands of kilometers away in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida.Not all fell into the trap of fraudsters but some less tech-savvy people in US and Canada would call the number written below the warning message and the bell used to ring at a fake call centre in Noida.
That was half a job done. Then came their skills of persuasion -- the fraudsters used to tell the American citizens that their system has been compromised and they are calling from some company’s technical support and asked to give remote access to their systems.
The moment they do that, the fraudsters used to persuade their victims that their system and their banking credentials are at risk as there are several malicious programs in it. To remove it, they used to ask for money in the form of gift cards or receive payments through USDT or BITCOINS.
All would have gone unnoticed but for the Noida Police who received a piece of secret information about such a cyber crime module being running in the city.“We had information that the alleged people are gathering at a farmhouse near a Gaushala in sector 135,” Additional DCP (Noida) Shakti Mohan Awasthi said, adding a team was then dispatched to the specified location from where all the alleged people were nabbed.
The accused people were identified as Sachin Lakhanpal, Agnibh Bannerjee, Rahul Gautam, Jai Kumar Kocchar, Pranab Bannerjee, Mohd Hamza and Shamil Khan.At the time of the raid, it was seen that the accused Sachin Lakhanpal and Agnibh Banerjee were giving information to Rahul Gautam and Jai Kumar Kochhar regarding planning of cyber fraud business and were motivating them to invest and become business partners.
On sustained interogation, the accused Sachin disclosed that they are running a call center in Sector 73, Village Sarfabad, from where they contact foreign people, especially the US citizens and cheat them in the name of technical support from Canada.“To start this kind of work, a lot of money is required to be invested. Hence, Rahul Gautam and Jai Kumar Kochhar had come for the meeting to invest the money,” the official said.
On their instance, a raid was then conducted at the location in sector 73 where the police unearthed the fake call centre and nabbed Pranab Bannerjee, Mohd Hamza and Shamil Khan who were caught red-handed committing the fraud.During the raids, the police seized 4 laptops, 5 laptop chargers, 2 mouses, 1 UPS, 2 Wi-Fi routers, 1 Wi-Fi charger, 15 headphones, as well as 2 mobile phones.
Modus operandi
The moment a call is connected, the fraudsters used to persuade their victims that their system and their banking credentials are at risk as there are several malicious programs in it. To remove it, they used to ask for money in the form of gift cards or receive payments through USDT or BITCOINS. All would have gone unnoticed but the Noida Police got a piece of secret information about such a cyber crime module being running in the city
