Two men have been arrested for allegedly duping a man of Rs 4.95 lakh by impersonating officers of the Mumbai Crime Branch. The accused, who were already in judicial custody in Tihar Jail in the 2023 cyber fraud case, were arrested by the Delhi Police on September 17.
“The complainant was deceived… on the pretext of the arrest of fake crime branch officials,” said the police officer.
The accused are Ghazipur resident Rakesh Singh, 26, and Sachin Sangwan (25) from Patparganj. “They were transferred to the police custody of the South West Cyber police station. The two have been wanted for a long time to be digitally arrested,” said a police officer familiar with the matter.
The arrest was based on a complaint lodged by Saurabh Pillay (45) a resident of Vasant Kunj. He allegedly received a call on March 28, 2023, from a man, who claimed to be a FedEx agent, saying that a package with Pillay’s name on it had been received for delivery to Toronto. “The caller said the package contained a SIM card, an ATM and a passport. When the complainant denied that he did not send that package, the caller asked him to open a case at the Colaba police station and then forwarded his call to another number,” said the police officer.
“Those who called the other number were said to be officers of the crime division,” added the police officer. ‘Crime branch officials’ are said to have told Pillay that he was in trouble and a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
“Later, the accused put him in touch with a lawyer who asked him to transfer Rs 2 lakh and Rs 2.95 lakh to the Yes Bank account for preliminary investigation, to proceed with the arrest warrant, the bail he was awaiting, to avoid attachment of his bank account and assets his. , and a ‘certificate of innocence’,” said the officer.
After Pillay transferred the said amount, the lawyer stopped answering his phone. Police said the money trail indicated that the bank account belonged to a resident of Mumbai. “The money was then transferred to another account which was found to be owned by Rakesh Singh,” said the police officer.
Sangwan, a BTech graduate, used accounts registered in the names of different companies to transport the fake money, police said. “Sangwan used to take money from Rakesh’s account using a cheque. He then transferred it to another account, and used P2P transactions on Binance, converting it to USDT, thus breaking the money trail,” another official said.
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