New Delhi, Sep 24 Four people have been arrested for allegedly posing as bank customer-care executives and duping a credit card holder of Rs 1.19 lakh on the pretext of cancelling a fictitious annual maintenance charge plan and issuing a new card, police said on Thursday.
The accused allegedly used virtual phone numbers resembling bank customer-care numbers and a third-party payment application to route the fraudulent transactions, they said.
The victim received a call on July 16 from a person posing as a bank credit card official, who allegedly told him that an annual maintenance charge of Rs 2,499 had been levied on his card.
When the victim sought cancellation of the purported charge, he was allegedly told that he would receive a call from the bank’s customer-care department, police said.
He subsequently received a call from a number beginning with +1850, with the caller allegedly posing as a bank customer-care representative. The victim was induced to download a third-party payment application on the pretext of cancelling a plan and issuing a new credit card.
The accused allegedly induced him to make three transactions totalling Rs 1,19,837, police said.
To gain his confidence, the accused allegedly provided a fake service-request number and assured him that the new card would be activated within four hours and delivered within two days.
When the card did not arrive, the victim contacted genuine bank customer care the following day and was informed that no such service request or new-card request existed. He then blocked his card and approached the police.
An e-FIR was registered and police analysed call detail records, customer application forms, mobile numbers, account data, UPI transactions and beneficiary bank accounts.
Several email IDs allegedly created in the names of different banks were also detected, police said. The financial trail led investigators to a bank account linked to Prince Kumar (20) of Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. The account showed suspicious transactions involving more than Rs 12 lakh within five to seven days, including the money allegedly cheated from the complainant, they said.
Prince was arrested from Aligarh on September 15. During questioning, he allegedly disclosed that he had opened the bank account with his associate Vishal Tomar and handed over the account kit to Vishal Raghav for money, police said.
Vishal Tomar (21) was subsequently arrested from Aligarh and allegedly disclosed that he supplied bank accounts to Vishal Raghav for monetary consideration. Raghav (27) was then arrested, police said.
Investigators subsequently arrested Sanjay Verma (40) from Uttam Nagar in Delhi. According to police, Verma had earlier worked at a call centre in Noida in 2024-25, where he allegedly learnt the modus operandi of impersonating bank customer-care representatives.
Police said Verma later operated a small call centre in Noida and, after the operation was shut down following police action against a nearby call centre, allegedly planned to restart the fraud network with associates Bobby and Avtar.
According to the investigation, Raghav allegedly arranged bank accounts, while fake SIM cards were procured through Bobby and Avtar. The accused allegedly used the SIM cards to contact potential victims and lure them with offers to cancel fictitious credit-card plans and issue new cards.
The accused allegedly used an application to generate virtual numbers resembling bank customer-care numbers. Victims were then allegedly directed to download the payment application and make payments through it, allowing the fraudsters to route and layer the money through the payment chain.
Police said the fraudulently obtained money was allegedly withdrawn through ATMs and other channels, with Raghav allegedly receiving a 30 per cent commission for withdrawing and handing over the proceeds to Verma.
Eight mobile phones were recovered from the accused. Technical analysis of one of the recovered devices showed links to 32 other complaints.
The four arrested accused have been identified as Prince Kumar, Vishal Tomar, Vishal Raghav and Sanjay Verma.
(PTI News)
