Customer care racket conning people under network providers' names busted in Tamil Nadu

The Cyber Crime Wing of Greater Chennai Police has busted a gang operating from West Bengal that cheated people posing as the customer care representatives of various network providers and swindled their savings from bank accounts.

Among the methods they employed, the latest was by conning people in the guise of making them recharge their phone number to continue to use the SIM card without any interruption from the service provider. The fraudsters would send SMSes and make calls posing as customer care executives of different network providers and ask the victims to recharge their phone for a puny sum of Rs 5 to 10. But before doing so, they would ask the victims to install certain remote-accessing apps such as TeamViewer to hijack the phone and record the debit or credit card credentials or net banking details entered on the phone. Within minutes, they would wipe out the entire savings and become not reachable.

A man from Kodambakkam fell prey to the fraud in September since he downloaded the ‘Fast Support’ app from rechargecube.com as informed by the so-called customer care executive and tried to pay Rs 5. He did so but was asked to try from another phone since the payment was not received. The victim paid Rs 5 again from his wife’s phone from her bank account and did once more from her other bank account since the payment was still not received. While the call got cut, the victim found that Rs 13 lakh had been transferred in total from all three bank accounts.

Based on his complaint, the cybercrime police registered a case and a special team rushed to Kolkata since the phone numbers used for the offence were operated from there. Soon, three men — R Bishwanath Prasad (25) and P Bapi Mandal (31) of Jharkhand and D Ram Prasad (30) of Kolkata — were secured from Howrah on Monday and 20 cell phones, 160 SIM cards, 19 debit cards, and four swiping machines were seized apart from Rs 11,20,000, 148 grams of gold ornaments, and a Honda City car. They were produced in a local court and brought to the city on Wednesday to be remanded in judicial custody.