The cyber-crime racket busted in Nuh a fortnight ago had duped around 28,000 people to the tune of ₹100 crore across the country, said the Haryana Police on Wednesday. The accused had lured people through online advertisements with sales on different products, work-from-home jobs, and extorted money through honey-trap.
Sixty-six people were arrested during raids in 14 villages of Nuh in the early hours of April 28 in this connection and 250 are still at large. Of those on the run, 20 are from Rajasthan, 19 from Uttar Pradesh and 211 from Haryana.
Giving details of the racket’s modus operandi on completion of the police remand of the accused, Nuh Superintendent of Police Varun Singla, in a press conference, said the accused would lure people with attractive offers of sales on motorbikes, cars and mobile phones and seek money on the pretext of courier and transportation charges, but the goods were never delivered. Similarly, advertisements were posted on social media platforms offering work-from-home opportunities, mostly related to the packaging of pencils, and people were duped on the pretext of registration fees, packing material charges and courier fees.
In some cases, the accused honey-trapped people through profiles on social media platforms, recorded their videos and extorted large sums of money.
Mr. Singla said 1,346 cases were registered against these cyber fraudsters across the country.
The bank accounts used to transfer money were mostly activated online seeking the details such as Aadhaar card number, Permanent Account Number (PAN), and mobile number from unsuspecting people on the pretext of providing them jobs. The investigation so far has revealed 219 accounts of private and public sector banks and 140 UPI accounts used for committing cyber frauds.
Besides, 347 SIM cards activated from Haryana, West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, North-East, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka circles of telecom companies have also been unearthed which were being used by these thugs for cybercrime. The opening of bank accounts and procurement of SIMs has been, in most cases, linked to Bharatpur in Rajasthan.
The accused are aged between 18 and 35 years and mostly studied only up to high school.
