Fake website resembles govt portal, hundreds of pensioners duped

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police has busted a gang, arresting four cheats who duped more than 1,800 people on the pretext of offering them life certificate for pensioners, officials said on Wednesday.

The accused were identified as Amit Khosa, Kanav Kapoor, Binoy Sarkar and Shankar Mondal, they said.

According to police, the matter came to light after a complaint was received from the National Informatics Centre that some fraudsters created a website https://jeevanpraman.online/ resembling the government portal.

Majority of the content was copied from the actual government portal and they were accepting payments through this fake website from the customers for Jeevan pramaan services.

Police said Jeevan Praman is an initiative of Government of India launched on November 10, 2014. It is a biometric-enabled digital service for one crore pensioners of the central government, state government and other government organizations.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Cell) Prashant Guatam said it surfaced during inquiry that through the website https://jeevanpraman.online, the accused asked the applicant to fill in the form for Jeevan Pramaan and received a registration fee of ₹ 199 per applicant and cheated common public in the name of providing Jeevan Pramaan.

A case was registered in this regard and during investigation, the team gathered technical information of the alleged website, bank details and call details from the website registrar, banks and scrutinized it. On the basis of technical investigation, the team identified and apprehended the accused after conducting raids in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana, the officer said.

Police said they have recovered a laptop, 10 mobile phones and SIM cards.