A 55-year-old cyber fraudster has been arrested by the Delhi Police from Haryana’s Nuh for allegedly posing as an armed forces personnel and duping a wire manufacturer on the pretext of purchasing his wares for a school, an official said on Friday.

The accused was identified as Ali Mohammad, a resident of Nuh.

The official said that so far, a total of 15 complaints in various states linked to the accused have been found and a further money trail of more than Rs 22 lakh has also been detected.

The arrest came after a complaint was received by police on June 10 from Ankit Garg, a resident of Delhi’s Shahdara area wherein Garg, who has a wire manufacturing business, alleged that he got a call from an army officer requiring wire for an army school.

“After discussion on the telephone, the deal was settled on an amount of Rs. 47,790. On June 9, the complainant received a Whatsapp call from another number and the caller sent him two bank account numbers and asked him to transfer Rs 5,” Deputy Commissioner of Police, Shahdara, Rohit Meena, said.

The accused assured Garg that double the amount will be refunded in his Bank account. “He asked him to try transferring a small amount, thereafter the complainant transferred Rs 5, and Rs 10 was refunded to his bank account. Further, the fraudster allured him to transfer the huge amount in the mentioned bank accounts to get double the amount in refunds,” he said.

Garg then transferred Rs 47,785 and Rs 12,335 separately in two bank accounts but he did not receive any amount back.

During investigation, the police team tasked with the probe collected the relevant information about the incident, analysed the call detail records of the suspect to identify the culprit and simultaneously worked on technical angles of the case.

“On the basis of technical surveillance on June 15, Mohammad was identified and arrested from Nuh (Mewat),” said the DCP.

During interrogation, it has been revealed that this gang of fraudsters have duped several people.

On the modus operandi of the gang, the DCP said that at first, fraudsters searched the details of vendors on Google, Just Dial and on other apps/websites to get their contact numbers and details of the product they deal in.

“After that, a few members of this gang impersonate themselves as Army officers and a few impersonate themselves as lower rank officers of the Army. Then they contact the victim/vendors through Whatsapp and normal calls,” said the official.

The gang members express interest in purchasing the item for official purposes but after settling a deal, they lure people on the pretext of doubling the amount into their bank but this is never refunded.

“These bank accounts were managed by other members of the fraudster gang. After that fraudsters used to withdraw the amount from the bank accounts through ATMs. In the present case, the cheated amount was withdrawn by the other group members and was handed over to Mohammad, who distributed the amount among the gang members as per their role,” the official added.

(The story has been published via a syndicated feed with a modified headline.)