Cyber-gang creates cyber-hub in border district to swindle pan-world customers / Rashmi Talwar

Cyber-gang  creates cyber-hub in border district to swindle pan-world customers

Rashmi Talwar

Tarn Taran, February 2, 2023 – Tarn Taran, a neighbouring district of Amritsar on the Indo-Pak border, once a hotbed of militancy came under the lens, with the busting of a unique model of a cyber-gang, systematically and blatantly operating from hotel premises. 

On getting the tip-off, the Tarn Taran police swooped on a hotel named ‘Seven Star Hotel and Restaurant’ and busted a 50-member gang of cyber-swindlers allegedly defrauding foreigners by compiling their e-mail identities and other details.

SSP Tarn Taran Gurmeet S Chauhan while taking to ‘Kashmir Images’ revealed that the police had got a solid tip-off about the nefarious activities of the gang from a local source. “They had rented out three rooms and occupied the lower conference hall of the hotel on rent and set up an authentic looking cyber-hub where operations of swindling were carried out, on a connected and mass scale, while they stated and pretended it was a ‘Computer Training’ program going on”, he added.

The hotel authorities when questioned by the police and the cyber sleuths, said that the group had booked the premises and set up the computers on the pretext of computer training, and had got the computers in a truck.  The gang had also installed its VICI dial software system, in the hall where more than 60 computers were under operation.

The gang was dealing with clients/ persons in the USA, the UK, Canada, and other countries as its customers. Interestingly the gang members introduced themselves as employees of ‘The Department of Work and Pension’ with the National Insurance Company. They collected the e-mail IDs of customers and using it interacted with the insurance company and with a ‘swapping technique’ got money transferred in their own bank accounts.

Police and the cybercrime branch raided the premises and took 63 computers installed in different locations of the hotel into custody. The SSP added that three suspected members of the gang were detained and an investigation was on. Along with fraud, the gang has been booked under the IT Act. The border district is also notorious for drug smuggling and drone dropping of arms and ammunition from across the border.

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