The Ahmedabad City Cyber Crime Branch has arrested four men from Ahmedabad and Vadodara for allegedly supplying bank accounts to Dubai-based cyber fraud handlers, in a case where one complainant was allegedly cheated of Rs 67.92 lakh through two fake investment applications. Investigators have linked the recovered accounts to more than 80 fraud complaints across 15 states, with transactions exceeding Rs 50 crore.
Source: Nation Press
According to investigators, the complainant was contacted through WhatsApp numbers and persuaded to invest through an application called 'JB X One', purportedly operated by Julius Baer. The accused allegedly sent a forged certificate bearing the name, logo, signature and stamp of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to make the scheme look genuine, and the complainant transferred Rs 47.14 lakh through the application.
In a second stage, a person identifying herself as 'Anju Garg' from ICICI Securities allegedly offered the complainant access to block trading with promised returns of 5 to 20 per cent in a single day. The complainant was persuaded to download a second application, ID-QSB, and invest Rs 20.78 lakh, after which the platform displayed a fabricated balance of Rs 74,32,707.79. When the complainant tried to withdraw the money, the operators allegedly demanded a 20 per cent short-term capital gains tax and a 4 per cent health and education cess, officials said.
Four arrested from Ahmedabad and Vadodara
The four arrested men have been identified as Irfan Sheikh (41) and Soheb Jojavarwala (37), both residents of Vadodara, and Shehzad Ajmerwala (35) and Istiyaq Riyawala (38), both from the Jamalpur area of Ahmedabad. Investigators allege the men worked in a chain: Irfan allegedly gave his bank account to Soheb for a commission, Soheb allegedly aggregated accounts and supplied them to Shehzad, and Shehzad allegedly passed them to Istiyaq, who is alleged to have forwarded the accounts to associates in Dubai. More than 30 bank account kits were recovered from Istiyaq alone, police said. All of these are allegations and the investigation is continuing.
Checks on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCCRP) linked the recovered accounts to the complaints across the 15 states, according to the reports. The Sandesh report, carried by Urban Acres, said the Cyber Crime Branch is preparing to inform the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department about the suspected transactions. The Ahmedabad City Cyber Crime Branch said further investigation is underway to map the full network and identify other people involved, including the overseas handlers.