Hyderabad police arrest 14 for cyber frauds

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad City Police on Tuesday arrested 14 persons allegedly involved in different cyber fraud cases in the city.

In the first case, the police caught 11 persons, including four women, who allegedly duped people on the pretext of redeeming reward points of the credit card of a bank. Gang members had called up victims saying they were from the SBI head office and convinced the victims on the pretext of redeeming reward points.

“When the victims revealed their card details, the suspects made PoS transactions using OTPs. They had set up a call centre at Noida to carry out the illegal activities,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Dr. Gajarao Bhupal said, adding that the gang was involved in 18 cases in Telangana and over 100 cases in India.

In another case, two persons were arrested for cheating people by introducing themselves as senior government officials. The arrested persons, Raghav Appu of Bengaluru and Anand Kumar of Bihar, used pictures of government officials as their WhatsApp Display picture.

“They sent messages to a few government officials, public representatives and others urging them to immediately transfer money to a Google Pay number,” police said, adding that they also sent links to recharge Amazon Gift cards.

“Once the victim does the recharge, the fraudsters sell it online at a discount of 30 per cent,” police said.

In the third case, one native of Bihar was nabbede for duping a woman of Rs.39 lakh. The suspect, Rakesh Kumar, 27, called up a woman saying she had won a lottery of Rs.25 lakh. “On the pretext of helping with claiming the prize money, he duped her of Rs.39 lakh,” officials said.