‘Digital arrest’: Bengaluru techie loses Rs 11 crore made from Rs 50 lakh in stocks over 10 years

The ‘digital arrest’

It each began connected November 11 past twelvemonth erstwhile Vijay Kumar received a telephone from idiosyncratic claiming to beryllium an authoritative of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Claiming that his documents were utilized for amerciable advertisements and messages, the caller said determination were constabulary cases against him successful Mumbai. What baffled Vijay Kumar was that a “police officer” claimed Rs 6 crore had been laundered by a idiosyncratic named Naresh Goyal utilizing his documents.

Threatening to apprehension him and his household members, the cybercriminals allegedly coerced Vijay Kumar into transferring Rs 11.83 crore to a Gujarat-based bullion trader implicit the adjacent month. During this time, Vijay Kumar was “interrogated” connected a virtual level and adjacent tried earlier a fake tribunal that was claimed to beryllium the Supreme Court.

On December 12, 2024, a period aft his “digital arrest”, Vijay Kumar walked into a constabulary presumption to explicate his ordeal. It was excessively precocious for him to realise that helium had fallen unfortunate to cybercrime, losing specified a important magnitude of money.

How KYC documents helped constabulary ace the case

The Bengaluru Northeast constabulary discovered that Rs 7.5 crore had been transferred to an relationship held by Dhaval Bhai Shah. Upon interrogation, helium said that Vijay Kumar had transferred the wealth to bargain golden bullion, which was delivered to his associates.

Upon checking, it was recovered that the documents provided were so Vijay Kumar’s, but the telephone fig was different. As investigations continued, the constabulary discovered that the SIM paper was not progressive successful India but had been activated from a store successful Gujarat. The fraudsters had called successful Vijay Kumar’s sanction to bargain golden bullion and shared his documents.

When the constabulary checked the interaction fig of the idiosyncratic who collected the golden bullion from Shah, they traced him to Karan, who owned a store successful Dubai but was surviving successful Gujarat. The constabulary tracked him down and recovered that helium had purchased respective SIM cards nether antithetic names from Tarun Natani, who owned a mobile store successful Delhi. The probe revealed that Karan utilized to bargain SIM cards from Natani and nonstop them to Dubai, from wherever calls connected WhatsApp were made to “virtually” apprehension imaginable fraud victims.

During interrogation, the accused said that a idiosyncratic named Neel Bhai, who has settled successful Dubai, operated the fraud and that they received a commission. A important information of the wealth was converted into golden bullion, which was past sold successful India, with the proceeds being transferred done hawala channels.

“We person frozen accounts containing astir Rs 3.75 crore. We fishy the bulk of the wealth has been transferred done hawala commercialized to ‘Neel Bhai’,” said a constabulary officer.