Friday, 19 January 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The cyber crime police station of Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) arrested a cyber fraudster from Haryana for duping a Nainital resident of Rs 35 lakh on Thursday. The accused identified as Ravikant Sharma (32) is a resident of Haryana’s Faridabad district and has been allegedly duping people for about the past 10 years.
According to him, this is the first time authorities nabbed him, the senior superintendent of police of STF Ayush Agrawal said. He informed that Sharma has allegedly scammed several people of various states by posing as an employee from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other agencies to lure the victims to invest the insurance policy money under various schemes to get profits. A Bhimtal resident registered a complaint in October last year that his brother called him stating that his life insurance policy is stuck in RBI and will be released after paying the amount of Tax Deducted at Source (TDS). He said that his brother paid the amount and after that, the scammers made him pay more money to various bank accounts under the pretext of giving him more profit in the future. His brother paid a total of Rs 35 lakh to the scammers.
Considering this, the case was transferred to the cyber crime unit of STF’s Kumaon range headed by the deputy superintendent of police Sumit Pandey. The cyber crime team analysed the bank accounts and mobile numbers provided by the complainant which were used to scam him. Agrawal said that the team found out that cyber criminals used pre-activated sim cards which were allotted in the name of other persons. They had also withdrawn money from various bank accounts in which the victim had deposited the money. These bank accounts were also opened using fake IDs. These banks were located in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena and Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah and the money from these accounts was withdrawn from various ATMs in Noida, Delhi and Haryana.
The police team collected technical and digital evidence like ATM footage and identified the main accused Ravi Kant Sharma, SSP said. He informed that the police also recovered three mobiles, five sim cards, six debit cards, and three cheque books along with an Adhaar card and PAN card from the accused. The STF is collecting evidence about frauds committed by Sharma and his gang in other parts of the country, he added.
