Cyber Crime Cyberabad police busted a Racket and arrested a gang of (7) members who prepare polymer fingerprints (Rubber Finger Prints) and withdraw the amounts from innocent bank account holders.
Brief facts of the case:
The complaint in the year 2019 took franchise from Roinet Solutions Pvt. Ltd., and white labeled his franchise as: “Epoint India”. His job is to appoint the Business Correspondent Agents by taking the documents Aadhar Card, PAN card, Bank Passbook copies. The agents can provide Mini Bank services to the needy customers of all banks with AEPS (Aadhar Enabled payment System) method. The complainant’s company provides the user ID and passwords to the agents to provide the services of bill payments, money withdrawal and transfer through their “Epoint India” app. Accused on 04-05-2022 contacted the complainant and asked for AEPS License to give service to the customers. On that complainant verified his KYC documents and gave him a User ID and password. The accused started transactions on 05-05-2022. After a few days, the complainant got notification from Roinet Solutions stating that this particular Agent (accused) has fraudulently withdrawn amounts from (149) bank customers without their knowledge by cloning their finger prints. Total of Rs. 14,64,679/- was transferred to 9 different bank accounts.
Modus Operandi:
Fraudsters have vast experience in the banking, lands & registration fields. By using vulnerabilities in IGRS Portal of Andhra Pradesh State, he downloaded Land registration documents. From there he collected the Name, Aadhaar Number and fingerprints. By using those finger prints, fraudster prepares polymer finger prints (Rubber Fingerprints) of them using a chemical of heat. Post preparing the finger prints, fraudsters register with Digital Banking applications (AEPS Applications) which is also called as mini-ATM’s. Easy Pay application were used for finding out the linked bank accounts and balance in those bank accounts. E-Point India application were used for withdrawing the amounts using the prepared polymer finger prints. In this way they prepared more than 10,000/- fake finger prints and lured the innocent bank accounts to the tune of crores of rupees.
Roles of the accused:
| A-1 | Nallagalla Venkateshwarlu @ Venkatesh R/o Beeramguda, Sangareddy District, Telangana N/o Dornala, Prakasham District, Andhra Pradesh. | Mastermind to this offence. He downloads Land Registration documents from Registration & Stamps Department official website of Andhra Pradesh State and captures finger Prints from those documents and prepares Polymer finger prints. Also has taken Customer Service Point/Business Correspond Agent using forged documents and withdrawn amounts from bank accounts using the prepared finger prints. |
| A-2 | Meghavath Shanker Naik @ Shanker Reddy, R/o Beeramguda, Sangareddy District, Telangana N/o Dornala, Prakasham District, Andhra Pradesh. | He assists A1 to identify the bank accounts & balance amounts linked to the prepared finger prints. Also supplies mule bank accounts for en-cashing cheated funds and arrange KYC and other documents |
| A-3 | Ratham Srinivas R/o Beeramguda, Sangareddy District, Telangana N/o Dornala, Prakasham District, Andhra Pradesh. | Assists A1 in preparing the polymer finger prints, maintaining data and downloading land registration documents. |
| A-4 | Darshanam Samelu R/o Ranguthota, Ongole, Prakasham District, Andhra Pradesh | Supplies pre-activated SIM cards to A1, also maintains finger prints data and Aadhaar data in excel format. |
| A-5 | Challa Manikanta R/o. Seetharam Nagar, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. | Arrange KYC documents and other data of random persons for activating user accounts in digital financial services |
| A-6 | Sheik Khasim Vali R/o Dornala, Prakasham District, Andhra Pradesh. | Supplies mule bank accounts to A1 for en-cashing cheated funds |
| A-7 | Vishwanathula Anil Kumar R/o Bandlametta, Ongole, Prakasham District, Andhra Pradesh. | While customers visit to store, he activates a SIM card by Digital KYC and he says customer that Digital KYC has failed. Later using E-KYC method POS agent activates another SIM card on customer. In this way A7 as POS agent activates two SIM cards on the customers who visit to his store. Among both SIM cards he provides Digital KYC activated SIM card to customer and E-KYC activated SIM to A4. |
Seizure:-
- 2500 cloned finger prints.
- Cash of Rs. 3.4 lakhs
- 121 SIM cards
- 20 Mobiles
- 13 Debit Cards
- 1 PAN Card
- 2 Aadhaar
- 3 Routers
- 4 Biometric Fingerprint Scanner.
- 3 Pendrives (With Land Documents downloaded)
- 4 K.G COLOP Photopolymer Orange liquid gel.
- 3 K.G Primer liquid bottles.
- One SUN X5 Plus Sun UV led nail lamp pink in color.
- Two Transparent Rectangular glass plates.
- One laptop
- Five thick in size Plastic Papers.
- Ten thin in size Plastic Papers.
- One roll of plastic paper.
- 10 Sheets of negative fingerprint copies
- 1 Car
APPRECIATION BY COMMISSIONER OF POLICE :
Commissioner of police, Cyberabad Shri Stephen Raveendra, IPS., appreciated K.Srinivas, Inspector of Police., Sandeep Raj, Sub-Inspector of Police., N.Vinayak Rao, Asst-Sub Inspector for Police., Beeke Nand Yadav, PC., Raju Rathod, PC., Y. Raja Ramesh, PC., Ravi Sai, PC., M Sai Kiran Reddy, PC., K Prashanth Reddy, PC., Md.Arshad Ali, PC., K.Sandeep Reddy, PC., K. Mahesh, PC., P. Ramesh, PC., G.Kavitha, WPC., B.Aruna, WPC., Satish, PC., who worked under the guidance of Sri Kalmeshwar Shingenavar, IPS., DCP Crimes, Cyberabad. They are appreciated and rewarded suitably.
Advisory: –
- IGRS portal may be maintained in a secure way, where it should not allow random persons to view or download land registration documents.
- RBI is requested to issue guidelines to Digital payment Applications (AEPS) mandating proper KYC verification of agents.
- RBI is requested to issue guidelines to Digital payment Applications (AEPS) mandating multi factor authentication method.
- Department of Telecom is requested not to allow 2 SIM activations on same day with different modes of KYC & citizens are also requested to verify the same while taking SIM card.
- Citizens are requested not to believe any mediators, while opening bank account. Citizens are requested to directly visit banks personally.
Commissioner of Police,
Cyberabad.
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