Noida: Police arrested four men for allegedly duping a 62-year-old resident of Greater Noida West of more than Rs 21 lakh on the pretext of clearing pending dues for a piped natural gas (PNG) connection in a cyber fraud.On March 1, the victim received a phone call from an unidentified person who introduced himself as a representative of Indraprastha Gas Ltd. The caller warned the victim that the services could be disrupted if the outstanding bill was not cleared. Trusting the caller, he opened the link and filled in his bank account details as instructed.The fraudsters subsequently gained unauthorised access to the victim’s bank account, broke his fixed deposit and transferred Rs 21.26 lakh through 11 separate transactions.Upon checking his bank account, the victim lodged a complaint through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP), following which a case was registered at the cybercrime branch police station on March 9 for cheating and impersonation under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act.The Cybercrime Branch then launched an investigation and tracked the flow of the defrauded money.After three months of investigation, police arrested the four accused on Thursday. The accused were Sachin (28) , Shahnawaz (27), Shivam (22) and Shubham (26).The investigation revealed that the accused allegedly allowed cybercriminals to use their bank accounts to receive the proceeds of online fraud in exchange for a commission ranging from 10% to 20%.“The suspects provided their bank accounts to cybercriminals for routing the fraud money. The amount cheated from the victim was transferred into these accounts. Further investigation is underway to identify and arrest the remaining members of the network, including those supplying bank accounts to fraudsters,” a senior officer said.Police have appealed to citizens not to click on suspicious links received through calls, SMS or messaging applications for bill payments, KYC updates or other financial transactions. They also advised people to verify the identity of callers claiming to represent banks, utility service providers or other companies before sharing any personal or banking information.
