12 Kolkata: The Cyber Crime Branch of Kolkata Police has arrested four more individuals, including a husband-wife duo, for providing pre-activated SIM cards to cyber fraudsters residing in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar by using the biometric details of Kolkatans without their knowkedge. Four others were arrested in the case on Tuesday as reported by TOI in Wednesday's edition.
"We carried out the raids in different parts of Beliaghata and Topsia and arrested four more individuals: Sajal Mondal (33), a resident of Pragati Maidan, Entally resident Arijit Roy (33), Tiljala's Md Reza (22) and Kestopur's Rajesh Mahato. This takes the total number of arrests in the case to eight," said joint CP (crime & traffic) Rupesh Kumar.
All the accused were produced before the court on Wednesday.
Altogether, 15 biometric authentication machines, 722 SIM cards (Airtel, Jio, Vi, BSNL) and 10 cellphones were recovered. "The seized items include a biometric authentication device that was used by Mahato, fitted with some glue-like material with a fingerprint impression embossed on it. This was ostensibly used to fraudulently obtain the fingerprint-based Know Your Customer (KYC) data of unsuspecting individuals," said Kumar. These were then used to commit loan and digital arrest frauds.
"The fraudsters would ask customers to give their thumb impression on biometric machines and would then inform them that the verification process failed. But in reality, they were successful verifications. The accused would then use the verified data against which they would collect a genuine SIM and sell it to cyber fraudsters," said DC (Cyber Crime) Abhishek Modi.
The point of sales were established close to slums where discounts were offered to buy SIM cards, claimed cops.
Lalbazar had earlier registered a case against SIM card sellers of various telecom firms who were providing a large number of SIM cards for use by cyber fraudsters in India and abroad. The SIM cards were being used in Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar for cyber slave operations.
The first four individuals, including the mastermind couple, were arrested for activating fake SIM cards.
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