3 accused in SIM swap cases brought to city

Hyderabad: The Cyber Crime police arrested the three accused in the SIM swap cases and brought them from Kolkata to Hyderabad on Saturday on transit warrant.

The accused in the cases are Sagar Mahato, Kumar Gaurav Singh and Sanjay Agarwal.

As per the investigation, on 4 September, the police received a complaint from a person who said that a total of Rs 35,89,899 has been fraudulently transferred into some unknown accounts through IMPS, RTGS, NEFT transactions from his three of the accounts.

The complainant had overdraft accounts with the DCB bank which he uses for his business and all the accounts were registered with his Yahoo mail ID and his mobile numbers. The OTPs for all transactions are received on this mail ID and the mobile numbers for all three accounts.

The mobile number registered with the bank accounts got deactivated on May 20. When he checked his Internet banking, he came to know that five beneficiary accounts were added to the three accounts without his knowledge and consent.

The modus operandi in such cases is that the accused, who, in this case, is a Nigerian named Shedrick Paul, would send to customers of a particular bank links through email regarding something about a tax refund or similar matters. Once the customer clicks on the link his or her electronic device which is used for accessing the mails would be compromised. Thus, Paul could now have access to the bank credentials of the customer through the device.

“After this, Sagar Mahato would go to the registered mobile service provider of the customer and obtain a new SIM card by submitting fake KYC documents saying that his mobile number was lost. In this way, the original SIM of the original customer will be deactivated and the one with the fraudster will get activated. This gives them access to the victim’s bank account. Later, Paul will add beneficiaries to the bank account of the customer without his knowledge and divert money using the internet banking and OTPs received on the duplicate mobile number, into the bank accounts provided by Sagar Mahato, Kumar Gaurav Singh and Sanjay Agarwal,” said the police.

The police said that Sagar Mahato used to withdraw the amount from different ATMs and distributed their share before sending the remaining amount to Paul in the form of Bitcoins.

The accused were also involved in another case of the Cyber Crime PS, Hyderabad, where the complainant was cheated of Rs 50 lakh. Sagar Mahato was also involved in a recent case of Mumbai Cyber Crime PS where the amount of fraud was Rs 2 crore.

The police seized a 7 mm pistol with two magazines and six bullets, seven mobile phones, and three debit cards from the accused.