Four individuals have been arrested for allegedly working pretend web sites of a number of reputed manufacturers and duping aspiring businessmen on the pretext of getting them franchise, dealership and distributorship, police mentioned Sunday. They mentioned the accused — Vinay Vikram Singh (37), Vikas Mistri (24), Vinod Kumar (27) and Santosh Kumar (32) — have been arrested throughout raids in Delhi, Bihar, Haryana, and Punjab.
They ran pretend websites of reputed manufacturers similar to Amul, Patanjali and Haldiram by getting them registered with comparable sounding domains and selling them via Google Ads for larger rating and on-line visibility, a senior police officer mentioned.
Police mentioned throughout investigation they discovered the gang was linked to round 126 cyber fraud incidents throughout 16 states and duped over Rs 1.1 crore from individuals to this point. The police received 17 financial institution accounts of the gang freezed, they mentioned. According to police, the matter got here to mild after one of many gang’s victims approached the police telling them she was duped by them.
In her grievance, she informed the police she wished to run a Haldiram outlet and whereas browsing on-line, she got here throughout a web site claiming to be of Haldiram and it supplied franchise and dealership.
When she contacted on the given cell quantity, she was requested to fill some varieties, submit paperwork and pay numerous costs for verification, safety deposits and so on and ended up being duped of Rs 11.74 lakh over a interval of two months, the police mentioned.
When she was requested to pay one other Rs 1.6 lakh on a flimsy floor, she realised she has fallen prey to a fraud within the title of Haldiram dealership, they added. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Anyesh Roy mentioned that in the course of the course of investigation, it was discovered that numerous pretend web sites are working within the title of Haldiram, and all these web sites are providing franchisee of Haldiram for large quantities.
“It was additionally discovered that numerous individuals throughout the nation has change into victims of those pretend web sites. It additionally got here to our discover that these fraudsters have been utilizing a number of financial institution accounts and numerous bogus SIM playing cards in additional than 36 smartphones to cheat individuals. The particulars of all these have been obtained and the suspects have been zeroed in,” he said.
On the night of August 27 and 28, raids were conducted at various places in India including Nalanda (Bihar), Faridabad (Haryana), Ludhiana (Punjab) and Delhi. This led to the arrest of four members of the gang, said the officer.
“During interrogation, accused Vikas revealed that he along with his associates used to purchase the domain names of big brands and got the websites developed in such a manner that it appeared genuine. One phone number was also displayed on the website. When someone called on the given number for distributorship of the brand, he was asked to pay fees on pretext of various charges,” he mentioned.
Vikas used to change location between Bihar and Ludhiana. In Ludhiana, he used to remain for months and do the identical work there with accused Vinod and Santosh, who each are his family members. They got fee from the cheated quantity, the DCP mentioned.
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