Racket Duped Over 100 Victims of Crores, Busted by Mumbai Police; Crypto, Chinese Angle Being Probed

Mumbai Police has busted a racket which allegedly duped over 100 people of crores of rupees and arrested five accused.

The gang’s modus operandi was that they used to pose as police personnel and dupe people. They used to call victims posing as officers of Mumbai police, and say they had received a drug courier in the name of the victim. They would usually target women in this case. They would then ask them to download the Any Desk app and share a screenshot stating that they would want to investigate the victim, the police said.

After the screenshot was shared, the gang would get full access to the mobile phone. The gang would then withdraw lakhs of rupees from the victim’s account.

According to police, the gang has duped more than 100 such people. During the investigation, the police found that there are cases registered against these people in Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata, among others.

The kingpin in this case Shrinivas Rao Dadi, 49, was recently arrested from Hyderabad. The other four members of his gang have been arrested from Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

A police investigation has found that Dadi, who is a 12th pass, used to earn around Rs 3-5 crores on a daily basis.

“We are investigating the angle wherein money that was extorted from Indian nationals was being transferred for cryptocurrency transactions, which could then be sent to Chinese nationals,” said DCP Ajaykumar Bansal.

The investigating team was able to reach out to Dadi on the basis of bank account transactions and other technical footprints that were left back by the gang.

“Approximately Rs 1.5 crores were found in 40 bank accounts related to the bank. Now this is something that banks need to cross-check when such bank accounts are opened, if crores worth of transactions are being made on a daily basis in a saving account, then the bank should have raised the issue,” added Bansal.

Police seized four mobile phones, two laptops, 13 chequebooks, 14 ATM cards, one router, four SIM cards, two stamps, and 3 pen drives from the possession of the accused.

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