Nagpur cyber police arrest four in three frauds, one using police commissioner's photo

Nagpur: Cyber fraudsters have begun using the identities of Police Commissioner Vishwas Nangare Patil and officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as a tool for cheating. In Nagpur, a man was placed under "digital arrest" on a WhatsApp video call in which the commissioner's photograph was shown. He was frightened with talk of money laundering and links to terrorism and was made to part with Rs 1.04 crore. In another case, an AI-cloned voice was used to cheat a man of Rs 50 lakh. A bank was also defrauded with a forged letterhead of a fake company. In these three cases, Nagpur cyber police acted in Mumbai, Indore and Kanpur and arrested four accused.

Praveenkumar Talukdar, a resident of Dindayal Nagar, received a call from cyber fraudsters who introduced themselves as Police Commissioner Vishwas Nangare Patil and NIA officer Pradeep Jaiswal. They made a WhatsApp video call using the commissioner's photograph and frightened the victim by saying he was linked to money laundering and terrorist activities. Through continued pressure, they had Rs 1.04 crore transferred by RTGS to various bank accounts. In the investigation, Nagpur cyber police arrested Dinesh Ravariya (32) and Arvind Gala (45) from Mumbai.

In a separate case, cyber fraudsters lured a man with the promise of big profits in share trading and cheated him of Rs 2.87 crore. They trapped the victim through an Instagram advertisement, added him to a Telegram group and the FTMO trading platform, and induced him to invest. The victim put in crores of rupees across 33 transactions and realised later that he had been cheated. In the investigation, cyber police arrested Kakasaheb Mohan Darunde from Beed district on October 15. Darunde ran a large number of current corporate bank accounts and supplied them to cyber criminals.

On his information, Bhupendra Mahavir Jain and Yogesh Parasmal Jain were also arrested from Borivali in Mumbai. Both are originally from Ajmer in Rajasthan and were living in Mumbai. Police had laid a trap in Borivali for six days to catch them, and they were caught on the pretext of delivering a Zomato parcel. Through RBL corporate accounts, the two had moved the cheated money into 38 accounts in 39 transactions in just 24 seconds. Both are linked to cyber criminals in Hong Kong and Dubai.

In a third case, the accused contacted the father of Nikhil Nakhat, a resident of Hiwri Layout, on WhatsApp using the photograph of a respected member of the community. They copied that person's voice with AI voice-cloning technology and asked for money, pretending to be in trouble. Trusting the voice and the picture, Nakhat's father transferred Rs 50 lakh. In this case, police arrested Netram Shriram Chadar, 29, from Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

In a fourth case, fraudsters targeted a bank directly. A man phoned Yatindra Tripathi, manager of the Union Bank branch in Jaripatka, and claimed to be an employee of Unnati Motors. He then sent a forged letterhead in the company's name over WhatsApp and had Rs 9.50 lakh transferred by RTGS. In this case, cyber police arrested Durgakumar Bhagat Bahadur, 36, from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.