2 land in police net for duping 15 of Rs 2.27 cr

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 7

The Cyber Crime Cell of UT police has arrested two persons for duping 15 persons of Rs 2.27 crore on the pretext of sending them abroad.

The police said complainant Bhupinder Singh, a resident of Moga district, claimed he had come across an advertisement of “AS Immigration Consultant”, Sector 34, on Facebook. Since the complainant was looking for a consultant to send his daughter abroad, he contacted the agency.

A suspect, who introduced himself as Arvinder Singh, asked the complainant to visit his office, along with documents. The complainant visited the office in Sector 34 and handed over the documents.

The suspect made the complainant transfer Rs 20 lakh to a bank account and assured him of arranging a visa and air ticket for his daughter in a few days.

The police said when the complainant came to take the visa, the office was found locked and mobile phones of the suspect switched off.

The police said the complainant also met others who were duped by the suspect. A case was registered at the Cyber Crime police station.

During the course of investigation, the details of bank accounts, to which the victims had transferred money, were obtained. The police also scrutinised the call detail records of the mobile numbers used by the suspect.

“The bank accounts were found to be in the name of Arvinder Singh of Tarn Taran, Punjab. Subsequently, a raid was conducted at the given address, but the profile of the suspect found there didn’t match with the photo given to the bank and telecom companies,” said a police official.

Later, the police found that Arvinder was one of the clients who had submitted his documents with an immigration consultant and these were misused by the suspect.

The police said based on inputs, raids were carried out at different places and subsequentl,y Kamaljeet Singh (34), a resident of Jalandhar, was arrested.

During interrogation, Kamaljeet disclosed that he along with associate Mandeep Kumar had opened an immigration consultancy office in Sector 34. Kamaljeet had affixed his own photo on Arvinder’s documents and had opened bank accounts to dupe people. The police later nabbed Mandeep (37), a resident of Jalandhar, who was facing a case of attempted murder in Punjab.

Officials of the Police Department said the suspects, after shutting their office in Sector 34, were setting up a new office at Sriganganagar, Rajasthan, in the name of “Career Overseas”.

They said, “The accused had created IDs in the name of Gurwinder Singh and used Kamaljeet’s photo to set up the new office.”

Besides fake documents, the police have recovered 10 mobile phones, two ATM cards and a laptop.

Used forged papers to open bank A/cs

• Suspects had set up a consultancy firm in Sec 34 on forged papers and trapped victims looking to go aboard through FB ads
• They made victims transfer money to bank accounts and later disappeared; victims realised they were duped when they found the office shut
• During probe, cops got suspect’s bank accounts & call details, but during raid at Tarn Taran, they found person present there to be one of the victims
• Later, cops nabbed Kamaljeet Singh of Jalandhar, who disclosed his aide Mandeep Kumar’s ID; he too was arrested
• Suspects revealed they used to open bank accounts and get phone numbers using their photos on documents submitted by victims

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