Punjab Police bust online job fraud racket, arrests four from Assam

The Punjab Police's Cyber Crime Division has busted an international online job fraud racket with the arrest of four criminals from Assam, Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav said.

The modus operandi used by the gang was to lure people into the trap by offering lucrative "work from home" jobs through a Telegram mobile app group.

"To gain trust, fraudsters would initially give petty tasks to the victim, in return paying a small amount instead of accomplishing the task. Later, the victim was asked to deposit money on different pretexts in the lure of a bigger return," the DGP said, adding with these arrests the police have dug up another trail, leading to a deep-rooted cyber fraud nexus spread across the country.

Those arrested have been identified as Jahirul Islam, Rafiual Islam, Mehabub Alam, and Azizur Rehman.

Police teams have also recovered two swipe machines, two biometric scanners, an eye scanner, a fingerprint scanner, 38 PAN cards, 32 debit and credit cards, 16 SIM cards, 10 voter cards, nine Aadhaar cards, 10 bank account passbooks and cheque books, etc., from their possession.

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ADGP, Cyber Crime, V. Neeraja said following a complaint from a woman who was duped of Rs 25 lakh, a Cyber Crime team conducted an investigation into the case and found that the gang was running their operation from Assam.

During the operation, the accused Jahirul Islam and Rafiual Islam were arrested from Assam's Nagaon district and revealed that they were running a customer services point (CSP) to provide online services, and to make quick bucks they misused the documents of the public using Adobe Photoshop software.

Thereafter, Alam was arrested from Guwahati district and revealed that he came into contact with Rehman, who asked him to provide bank account details on a commission basis.

Police have also arrested Rehman from Morigaon district of Assam.

Sharing details, DIG, Cyber Crime, Nilambari Jagadale said investigations have revealed that till now 160 victims from across 23 states are defrauded and further investigation is likely to result in the identification of more victims.

Preliminary investigations have also suggested that the main kingpins, who are operating this fraud racket from overseas, were receiving money in cryptocurrency, she said, adding further investigations are being conducted by DSP, Cyber Crime, Prabhjot Kaur and more arrests are expected.