Hyderabad: 1 more held in SIM swap fraud case

Hyderabad: The cybercrime wing of city police on Monday brought one accused, T Chiranjeevi, to the city from Visakhapatnam on prisoner transit warrant on Monday. He was an accused in SIM cards swap fraud in which three persons were already arrested earlier from West Bengal and they were identified as Sagar Mahato, Kumar Gaurav Singh and Sanjay Agarwal.

According to police, the main accused is a Nigerian named Shedrick Paul who is still absconding. The main accused operates from Nigeria and he sends links to the mail IDs of bank customers in the name of income Tax refund or any other process refund. Once, the customer clicks on the links provided in the email and then his electronic device which is used for accessing the mails will be hacked.

B Ramesh, Inspector of Police, Cybercrime, noted, "By using this technique the main accused would hack the customer's details. The accused Chiranjeevi was the prime account supplier as he gave his three accounts to the accused to be added as fake beneficiaries and in turn he got commission.

The main accused from Nigeria used to share the details with Sagar Mahato who then visits a mobile shop and purchases new SIM card by submitting fake KYC documents of the registered mobile number of the customer with the bank saying that his mobile number was lost and used by somebody."

The issue came to light when a victim filed a police complaint stating that his money was siphoned off from his bank accounts as he had three overdraft accounts with DCB and was using same email ID for all his business transactions. On day he saw that an amount of Rs 35 lakh was transferred illegally to some beneficiaries without his knowledge.

Based on the complaint a case was registered and the three persons were arrested u/s 66 C, D of IT Act and 419, 420 of IPC and were remanded to judicial custody, said the police.