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MHA-led team busts 'fraud-to-phone' racket running across 18 states; 8 arrested, 350 suspects under scanner

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 6/16/2021 11:20:44 AM

New Delhi, June 15 Apan-India joint operation to bust a cyberfraud gang was led by MHA’s Financing Coordination Centre (FCORD) to unearth a multi-crore scam. FCORD coordinated this operation with police forces from 18 states. The fraud to phone (F2P) scam, which was initially busted, was of Rs 6.5 lakh. But the FCORD and Madhya Pradesh Police soon found out that it was just the tip of the iceberg. The team soon understood that there are around 700 such scamsters around the country and put them under scanner. The teams, however, managed to nab eight 'fraud-tophone' (F2P) gang masterminds, including four from Jharkhand, two each from Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. The case was cracked in less than five days. Lauding the efforts of the MHA-led team, Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday tweeted "MHA’s CyberSafe is a comprehensive system meant to tackle digital frauds and making digital payments secure. Glad to share that this app leads to the neutralisation of a pan-India Fraud Gang spread over 18 States/UTs. You, too, can check suspects at https://cybersafe.gov.i n.” During the operation, over 300 new mobile phones bought from stolen funds were seized. After further investigation, 900 cell phones, 1,000 bank accounts and hundreds of UPI and e-commerce IDs of this gang were identified and were put under scanner. Nearly 100 bank accounts, debit and credit cards, too, were frozen. The scam was detected after a 78-year-old Udaipur resident complained to Rajasthan Police that he was defrauded of his hardearned money. After cops entered the phone number of the fraudster caller into F C O R D - r u n "CyberSafe" application, cops found that the F2P caller was operating from Jharkhand. Tracking via the FCORD-run CyberSafe app revealed that the funds were directly credited to 3 SBI cards, which were used to buy 33 expensive Chinamade Xiaomi POCO M3 mobile phones from Flipkart. The money was used to buy phones, which were sent to 9 addresses, which belonged to the mastermind. The F2P gang bought these phones for about Rs 10,000 each and sold them in the black market for 5-10% discount. Jharkhand police have arrested the F2P caller. Incidentally, the mastermind of this multicrore scam is Hukum Singh Bisain, a Balaghat resident, who is a sub-engineer in Railways and ironically an IAS Aspirant. Speaking to media over the phone, Balaghat SP Abhishek Trivedi said: "The F2P gang has three areas of work. One of them will call and receive money through OTP fraud and dupe gullible citizens.