16 arrested by Cyberabad cops for posing as RBL bank employees

Hyderabad: As many as 16 gang members were arrested by the Cyberabad’s cyber crime police after a fake RBL bank call centre was busted in Uttam Nagar, Delhi. The accused were involved in 34 cases in the Cyberabad commissionerate and 166 cases all over India. Pretending as RBL Bank employees, they cheated citizens to the tune of Rs 3 crore and 1,000 sim cards were seized from their possession.

According to Cyberabad police Stephen Ravindra, the fraudsters have a vast experience in the banking field and they managed to collected data of RBL bank’s customers, especially card details like name, mobile number, type of card, partial card number etc. After that, they established 5 to 6 call centers in Mohan garden and Uttam Nagar in Delhi to scam people.

By using spoofing calling applications (MoSIP and Silver Dialer) fraudsters contacted the RBL credit card holders who received new credit cards, and tricked them into believing they were employees of RBL Bank. Then collected OTPs by misguiding customers under the guise of card activation or deactivation, or for other things like increasing the credit card limit etc, and deactivating insurance.

After collecting OTPs, the fraudsters made transactions in their websites using the credit card details of the victims. In one of the cases, a complainant received a call from “+9102262327777”, wherein the caller identified herself as representative from RBL bank and asked whether the customer’s credit card was delivered or not.

After the complainant informed the fraudster that he had received the credit card but not the PIN number, the fraudster asked him to provide his PAN card details and also asked him to send a code which he received. The unsuspecting complainant shared the code and immediately received a message from bank that an amount of Rs 97,996 got deducted from his RBL Credit card.

Based on the evidence collected during the investigation, a 6-member team was sent to Delhi. It tracked down an office which was running websites and portals for the fraudsters at Dwarka in the National Capital Region and apprehended 6 accused persons. On interrogating them, they revealed more information about a call center being run by the accused persons in Uttam Nagar of New Delhi.

The Cyberabad police team returned to Hyderabad and interrogated the accused persons and found that the main gang leader was absconding and started tracking him. Another team was then sent to Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, after which seven more accused persons were arrested. That way, a total of 16 accused have been apprehended, while another 7 are absconding.