Tuesday, 26 December 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The cyber crime police station of Uttarakhand Special Task Force (STF) has arrested a 22-year-old man from Gujarat allegedly involved in a national level cyber scam of at least Rs 15.2 crore. The accused identified as Hunter Erich has over 100 cyber crime complaints registered against him from across the country and was wanted in 17 states, said the deputy superintendent of police of STF’s cyber crime police station Ankush Mishra. He said that a Dehradun resident registered a complaint at the cyber crime police station stating that an unknown person contacted him through WhatsApp and introduced himself as an official from a reputed company. He told him about part-time work from home job opportunities and added him to a Telegram group. He gave him tasks in the group and also assured him to give 30 to 40 per cent profit on investment on all Telegram handles.
According to the complainant, the unknown man duped him of Rs 34.04 lakh in the name of investments, said Mishra. He said that the cyber crime unit registered an FIR under section 420,120 B of the Indian Penal Code and 66 (D) of the Information Technology Act against the unknown at the cyber crime police station, Dehradun. The investigation was handed over to Inspector Vijay Bharti of the cyber crime police station. The team started the investigation and got the accused’s location via technical analysis after which they arrested him from Ahmedabad’s Narol in Gujarat.
The DSP said that the team recovered documents of 12 bank accounts through which, the accused and his gang had allegedly done transactions of over Rs 15.2 crore in the past three months. He claimed that the accused was also a Hawala operator who had opened a shell company named Shah Enterprise in Punjab’s Mohali. He opened this company so that he and his accomplices could send fraudulent transactions worth crores of rupees to various accounts of different companies, said Mishra. “The teams are interrogating the accused and will nab other culprits in the case in the near future,” he added.
