A transnational cyber fraud racket was busted with the arrest of four more suspects during raids across two states for operating remotely controlled illegal GSM call gateways from multiple locations in Gurugram, police said on Wednesday. The setup allegedly enabled Philippines- and Cambodia-based cybercrime gangs to dupe victims through “digital arrest” fraud.
Police said the arrested accused were two men from Gujarat and two from Maharashtra. All four, aged between 20 and 25, were arrested on March 26.
Police said the operation came to light on March 17 after two rented accommodations in DLF Phase-III U-Block were found running illegal gateways. From these sites, officials recovered 504 fraudulently issued SIM cards, five call gateway boxes, eight internet routers, 18 batteries and three inverters.
The first arrest in the case took place in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh on March 26 when searches across seven apartments in U-Block and Chakkarpur led to the seizure of 10 call gateway boxes, seven motion-sensor WiFi cameras, seven routers, four inverters, 24 batteries, 29 remote WiFi switches, 18 ethernet cables, and a railway ticket.
DCP (east) Gaurav Rajpurohit said, “Overall, we have recovered 15 call gateway boxes from nine different locations in U-Block and Chakkarpur from March 17.” He added the accused operated gateways remotely using cameras and router switches and were “in continuous touch with foreign nationals”. A special investigation team led by ACP (cybercrime) Priyanshu Dewan was formed. Additional FIRs were registered under BNS sections 318 (cheating) and 319 (cheating by personation).