On Sunday, The cybercrime unit of the Delhi police finally caught a gang in Delhi who had committed cyber frauds by operating the fake websites of famous brands. They have also offered the people to become dealers and distributors and then give them lakhs of money. After the cybercrime department came to know about these fake websites the four members of the gang were arrested. It then came to know that this gang is allegedly involved in 126 cases of cyber fraud. These cyber frauds were conducted in 16 states and union territories. According to the sources, it is also known that they have gained over Rs. 1.1 crore from the victim’s account.
This investigation was started when a 30-year-old woman filed a complaint against one of the fake websites to the police. This woman came across a website that seemed to belong to the brand “Haldiram’s”. The website offers franchises and dealerships so in the next few days she filled out many forms and paid around Rs. 11.74 lakh in two months.
According to the woman, she claimed that she was in touch with some “Haldiram officials” who were the gang members. According to the sources of Hindustan Times, the senior official of Haldiram told that “There are no franchises of the brand. Every Store has a separate owner.”
The woman was asked to pay ₹1.6 lakhs on the vague ground. It was the moment she realized she had been taken for a ride. In this way, she filed the complaint and the police busted the interstate gang of cyber frauds.
The deputy commissioner of police, Cyber Prevention and Detection unit’s (CyPAD) special cell, Anyesh Roy, said that while investigating this case they found a large number of websites that ran in the name of M/s Haldiram. They also found that these websites were offering the franchise of Haldiram without considering huge amounts. Surprisingly people across the country have fallen for such fake websites and this website has duped people on a large number.Â
Anyesh Roy said, “The fraudsters are using multiple bank accounts and operating a large number of bogus SIM cards in more than 36 smartphones to cheat people. We fetched all these details and found that the gang is spread out across the country. A team was immediately formed to nab the culprits. After several raids, four people, including the mastermind of the gang Vikas Mistry (24) were arrested.”
As soon as the devices were recovered from the accused and the data were found, the examination was done and it was found that including the fake websites of M/s Haldiram, the gang was also running fake websites of many famous brands like Amul and Patanjali.
According to the police, the gang used to develop these fake websites and registered the domain with sounds similar to the original one. They used to promote this website through Google ads so if one would search about the brands on Google and also about the dealership, distributorship, and franchise of the brands, then they would be directed to the fake website.
Along with Vikas, one of the developers from which the domain names of big brands were purchased, Vinay Vikram Singh was also arrested. Vinay used to develop websites that seemed to be the genuine websites of big brands. Vikas said that they used to purchase the domain names of big brands such as Haldiram, Amul, Patanjali, etc, from many developers. “Vikas also worked with his relatives, and he used to give his relatives a commission from the cheated amounts”, said Roy.
