Interstate cyber fraudster held

Kadapa (YSR District): Police arrested an interstate cyber fraudster for looting lakhs of rupees public money from the banks and seized 1 lakh Aadhaar card numbers down loaded from Integrated Grievance Redressal System(IGRS) portal, a hard disk having 1 lakh finger prints of bank customers, a scanner, two mobile phones and one monitor from him.

This is a first of its kind incident in the entire the state where the YSR district police cracked down such a huge scam called Aadhaar Enabled Payment Biometric system (AEPBS). The accused was identified as Seshanath Viswakarma alias Seshanath Sharma, 27, the master mind behind a 3-member gang from Choutavara village in Thana Khajani taluka of Gorakpur in Uttar Pradesh state. Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Superintendent of Police K K N Anburajan said the accused used to transfer money from the account holders of various banks across the country by copying fake finger prints of account holders through adoption of highly sophisticated technology called Aadhaar Enabled Payment Biometric system (AEPBS).

Following complaints from people over the transfer money from their bank accounts without knowledge, cybercrime division focused on the issue, the SP said. One Sanapu Rajasekhar Reddy from Pakirpalle area in Kadapa city lodged a complaint with Chinna Chouk police station on October 28 last year over the withdrawal of Rs 89,550 from his Canara bank and Union Bank SB Accounts between June 21, 2022 and June 29,2022 without his knowledge.

Based on the complaint, the SP said the investigation team noticed that the accused indulged in crime by adopting AEPBS through device scanners and traced out withdrawal location, customer service points for e-governance and banking services in Uttar Pradesh state. He said that a special probe team went to UP and busted the 3-member gang while indulging in the crime.

During interrogation, it was revealed that over 128 FIRs and 308 National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) petitions in various states were registered against the accused. The SP said over 440 victims lost their money across the çountry. The SP said that remaining two accused in this case would be arrested soon. Additional SP Tushar Dudi, Faction DSP Chenchu Babu, Cyber Crime CI Sridhar Naidu and Chinna Chouk SI Sriram Srinivas were present.