New Delhi, Sep 22 (PTI) Delhi Police has arrested three men from Noida for allegedly duping a Dwarka resident of Rs 5.5 lakh in a cyber investment fraud, and seized 40 mobile phones, 146 SIM cards, 86 debit cards and other banking and digital material from their possession, officials said on Tuesday.
The accused have been identified as Piyush Bala, 28, a resident of Jaitpur in Delhi, Bharath G Poojary, 32, from Udupi in Karnataka, and Suraj Kumar, 24, from Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, they said.
The arrests were made during the investigation into an e-FIR registered in Dwarka on July 19 on the complaint of a Sector-16 resident, who was allegedly induced to invest in the share market through a social media advertisement and a online group, police said.
According to the complaint, the woman came across an advertisement on social media in June and was subsequently added to a group named “Funds Invest”, where members and administrators allegedly shared investment tips promising exceptionally high returns.
One of the accused later contacted the woman through an online messaging application and shared investment plans and bank account details for transferring money, police said.
The woman transferred Rs 3 lakh to the account on July 16 and Rs 2.5 lakh to another account on July 19, taking the total transferred amount to Rs 5.5 lakh, they said.
Police traced the beneficiary of the bank account where Rs 2.5 lakh was deposited to a residential housing society in Sector 137, Noida, the officials said.
A raid at the said location led to the arrest of the three accuse, they said.
Police seized 40 mobile phones, 146 SIM cards of different service providers, 86 debit cards, three laptops, 28 cheque books, 18 passbooks and welcome letters, three passports, Rs 1.09 lakh in cash and a Wi-Fi router from the premises, the officials said.
During interrogation, the accused disclosed that they came in contact with the other members of the racket through Instagram and were involved in activities related to account logins and payment verification.
They allegedly provided mobile devices and banking material, including passbooks, cheque books, welcome kits, debit cards and SIM cards, to the other members of the network, police said.
According to police, six complaints registered on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal in Delhi, Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka were also found linked to some of the bank accounts recovered from the accused.
The cheated amount in these complaints is around Rs 4 lakh, they said.
(PTI News)
