New Delhi: Delhi Police on Monday arrested seven people and busted a racket that duped over 1,000 people by promising to help them procure visas to travel to countries in the Gulf countries or to Malaysia.
The Delhi Police Cyber Cell’s Crime Branch team busted the racket and nabbed the seven accused, Special Commissioner of Police (CP) (Crime), Ravindra Yadav told reporters during a press conference here today.
DCP Ankit Singh, ACP Prabhat and Inspector Virendra were part of the team that was involved in the arrests, which included that of Inamul Haq, the mastermind of the racket, who hails from Darbhanga in Bihar and whose relative was caught for alleged association with Indian Mujahideen, the police said.
The Special CP Ravindra Yadav further said at least 1000 people had fallen prey to the scam in which gang members used fake Aadhar cards.
Haq had dropped out from an engineering course at Kurukshetra University and got involved in this scam, said Special CP Yadav told the press conference.
A majority of those who were duped belonged to Kerala and the southern part of the country, he said.
Describing the modus operandi of the gang the Special CP (crime) said, “They (accused) used to open a front office in a good location in Delhi where they used to appoint two to three people and give the impression that they were operating a big company and could help arrange for visas to Gulf countries or Malaysia.”
“Members of the gang identified as Tabish Hashmi, Mohammad Tabrez Alam, Tariq Shams, and Ikram Mozafar used to phone people from a call centre. They uploaded the company profile on employment websites to figure out who wanted to go to Gulf countries,” said Special CP Yadav.
Detailing the modus operandi further, the Special CP said the gang used to cold call people and if they were able to lure a person, they used to direct them to their Delhi office and charged Rs 60,000 from a single person within a span of two to three months.
The gang, after duping victims shut their offices and repeated the process from a different office in a different location. The fraud operation had been going on for the past four to five years, police said.
DCP Ankit said, “Fraudsters of this kind register themselves as a firm as there are no checks on any point in online job portals, and they used to get their company’s registration done under the name of good companies that exist in Dubai.”