Five arrested for cheating people by posing as bank staff

Five men were arrested for allegedly cheating people by posing as customer care staff of a bank, police said on Tuesday.

They were identified as Anish Khan (29), Sahil (23), Vikas Kumar (30), Sandeep Kumar Singh (32) and Harish Tiwari (29), the police said.

On October 6, one of their victim's lodged a complaint alleging that he had approached the customer care service of a bank through Twitter as his credit card was not working. He was called back from a toll-free number and the caller falsely identified himself as an employee of the bank, the police said.

The caller offered to assist him and gave instructions. However, on following the instructions, the complainant realised that Rs 90,157 got deducted from his card, they added.

Based on his complaint, a case was registered under section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code at the Farsh Bazar police station, said R Sathiyasundaram, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahadra).

''Our team collected all relevant information and analysed the data as provided by the bank and the telecom company based on which we nabbed the entire gang, including the account holder, SIM card provider, middle-man, ATM card operator and the caller,'' he said.

The officer said the gang members used to collect details of prospective targets using social media posts about their complaints, and used a software that displays toll-free numbers of banks while calling.

''Thereafter, the caller used to transfer the amount by using the details of the victim's credit card onto the website 'housing.com' and from there, to their own accounts,'' he said.