Hyderabad: 5 held from Jharkhand for Paytm fraud

Hyderabad: The cybercrime wing of Cyberabad police on Tuesday brought five persons from Jharkhand on prisoner transit warrant for committing cybercrimes. The accused were identified as Nanku Mandal (27) and Rajesh Mandal (26) from Jamtara district, Shiva Shakti Kumar (25) and Dilkush Kumar Singh (18) of Deogarh district, and Gaurav Arun of Ranchi, and recovered an amount of Rs 4.30 lakh from their possession.

According to police, the accused were cheating people on the pretext of updating Know Your Customer details of their Paytm accounts. Nanku, the mastermind of the racket, along with Rajesh, contacted gullible persons and asked them to download remote access applications like Teamviewer and Quick Support to update their KYC details on the Paytm app.

Cyberabad Commissioner of Police VC Sajjanar said that the main accused Nanku used to obtain the mobile numbers through a local source, who was also involved in criminal activities. After obtaining the contact numbers, he would dial any number and if he got a confidence that he could trap the person, then he would trap him by talking smoothly.

"Later on, he would ask the victims to add a nominal amount to their Paytm accounts using their credit and debit cards. During such transactions by victims, using remote access, the accused would note down their Paytm login credentials and as he was expert in smooth talking, he would then ask them to share their One Time Passwords (OTPs) with him," he added.

"The accused gang then transferred funds from the victims' accounts into their e-wallets. Shiva Shakti Kumar and Gaurav Arun provided them electricity bills on a commission basis. Nanku and Rajesh cleared the electricity bills from the money they had stolen and took cash from Shiva Shakti Kumar.

The issue came to light when a woman was cheated in a similar fashion and she filed a police complaint with us, based on the complaint the accused gang was arrested and remanded to judicial custody," explained the officer.