Delhi: Army Subedar loses Rs 1.8 lakh in cyber fraud, 3 held

It would take almost a year for the police catch the three alleged fraudsters, including main accused Munna Kumar Baidya, who has managed to finance his lavish under-construction house at Chamra Bahiyar village in Jharkhand by duping several people like Hemant.

Hemant always preferred to visit his branch over using Internet banking. So, on May 20, 2024, when he received a call from an “employee” of his bank, saying that the “international service” feature on his account has been activated, his first instinct was to visit the bank.

“The man said that if I don’t turn off the international service feature, i will be charged Rs 20,000. I said I will go to the bank,” said Hemant, now posted in Guwahati, where he lives with his wife and two children.

But the man on call offered him an easier way out. “He asked me to click on a file he will send me on WhatsApp. I clicked and the bank’s mobile app got installed. On his direction, I clicked on the ‘disable service’ option. The app then asked me to type in my credit card number. As soon as I did, I got 11 OTPs back to back, and 11 transactions were made from my credit card,” he said.

Hemant lost Rs 1.8 lakh. The fraudsters had got remote access to his phone using ‘APK’ (Android Package Kit) app and could see his OTPs. The same day, he filed a police complaint.

With the help of call record details and the Internet Protocol addresses linked to the APK file received from Google, the Delhi Police traced the phone from which Hemant received the call to the Jamtara and Dumka area in Jharkhand.

However, when a police team reached the area, they were in a bind.

“The device had a new number. It was active in Godda district during the day and in Dumka at night,” said DCP (South West) Surendra Kumar Chaudhary.

On March 15 night, tracing the location of the phone, the police raided a house at Jarmundi in Dumka. The team found Anirudh Badiya, who didn’t have a clue about the scam, but was in possession of the phone used for the scam.

“When questioned, he said his son Munna Kumar Baidya was using the alleged device, but was not at home… After receiving information from his family and friends about the raid, Munna went into hiding,” Chaudhary said.

Tracing Munna’s current number, the police found him in the nearby Jama area, in his brother-law’s house. On March 16, he was arrested, police said.

During questioning, Munna, who used to be a Maths teacher, said he started getting involved in the cyber scam business in January 2024. As part of his modus operandi, he would first pay people working at third party call centres, who would be in possession of banks’ lists of clients so that they could make calls and try to sell banking services, police said.

In one of the excel sheets on Munna’s phone, there were contacts of around 20,000 credit card holders of different banks, they added.

The second step was to get the APK files from Telegram groups, and pay a daily fee in USDT – digital currency – for their subscription. These files, named after bank apps, would then be installed on victim’s phones.

The third step would require other two members of Munna’s team to step in. Dinesh Kumar (36) would call credit card holders, send them APK files and defraud them. The money, police said, would be transferred to online wallets and then to a private bank account.

The fourth step would see Bipin Kumar (23) step in. Bipin, to whom belonged the private bank account, worked as a driver at a government corporation. “He provided his account to receive the fraudulent funds,” said Chaudhary.

Both Dinesh and Bipin were arrested from Godda in Jharkhand days after Munna’s arrest.

Scrutiny of Munna’s device revealed that he had used the phone to make 5,500 calls to defraud credit card holders, using eight SIM cards. In all, 27 complaints were filed with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal against Munna’s SIM cards.

With Munna now under arrest, the police intend to auction his under-construction house and repay some of his victims. Under Section 107 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, the police can move court seeking to attach a property believed to be obtained from criminal activities.

“We will soon move an application before court. We want to auction his house to recover some of the defrauded amount and return the money to as many victims as possible,” an officer said.

For Hemant, he is back to visiting his bank. “I don’t have any banking app now. I feel safe going to the bank.”