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2 months after retired DRDO scientist in Delhi lost Rs 40 lakh to cyber fraud, 4 held

A call to a fake customer care number saw a retired DRDO scientist in Delhi losing his savings to scamsters who fraudulently accessed his banking details.

The accused allegedly also provided the victim with details of the “agency” from where he could procure the liquid for further sale, according to the complainant

In January this year, when a retired Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) scientist in Delhi looked up ‘Yahoo customer care’ on the internet, all he wanted was a quick fix to an issue with his email ID. In the week that followed, however, he ended up losing Rs 40 lakh as he fell victim to an online fraud.

More than two months later, on Friday, the Delhi Police said that the case had been cracked with the arrest of four people from across different states who allegedly duped the retired scientist by accessing his bank account via a malicious APK, or Android Package Kit, file.

“The complainant made a call to the customer care number to resolve a Yahoo Mail-related grievance. He received an APK file on his WhatsApp for filing a form containing sensitive financial details. Thus, the scammers received his banking credentials and accessed his bank account app for seven days and defrauded him of ₹ 40 lakh from his savings account as well as his fixed deposit,” Surendra Choudhary, Deputy Commissioner of Police, South West, said.

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The APK file had a slew of IP addresses, with most of them tracing back to cybercrime hubs like Deogarh and Jamtara in Jharkhand and Mewat in Rajasthan, the police said. “A further analysis of the CDR [call detail records] of the alleged calling number, IPDR [Internet Protocol Detail Record] of banking logs, and analysis of intermediary reports like Google confirmed that the fraud was orchestrated from Jharkhand and Mewat,” DCP Chaudhary added.

The police traced the location of the alleged caller to Deogarh and a team led by Inspector Vikas Kumar Buldak reached the city. The alleged accused frequently changed his SIM and his location within the city to evade the police but was eventually caught after the police received a tip-off. The police identified the accused as Iqbal Ansari, 27, the man who allegedly sent the APK file to the ex-DRDO employee.

Following Ansari’s arrest, other members of the gang were also arrested, the police said. While Sajid Khan, 32, was arrested from Alwar, Salman Khan, 27, was caught in Aligarh, and Narender Kumar, 29, from Bharatpur in Rajasthan.

According to the police, Ansari was behind the Google ads targeting customer service seekers. “He sent them (the victims) APK files after talking to them,” DCP Chaudhary said.

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Salman and Sajid allegedly duped job seekers. “Salman would filter names and contact job seekers on social media while Sajid would make calls to them and conduct fake interviews,” DCP Chaudhary added.

Kumar allegedly operated a mule account that was used to receive the defrauded money and then encashed it.

The entire operation, the police said, was executed by using five smartphones.

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