Surat In today’s digital age, cyber criminals are targeting people by adopting new modus operandi. Cyber Crime Cell in Surat, Gujarat has arrested three members of the notorious Jamtara gang. This gang was emptying people’s bank accounts by sending fake RTO e-challan APK files on their mobile phones. Investigation has revealed that the accused used to send a file named ‘Digital RTO e-challan.apk’ on WhatsApp. As soon as a user downloads this file, his mobile gets hacked. This malware used to obtain the permissions of the mobile’s messages, contacts and gallery, through which the fraudsters could directly read the OTP and withdraw money from the bank accounts. In one case, as soon as the complainant’s son downloaded this file, a total of Rs 5 lakh 02 thousand 562 were withdrawn in pieces from his account.
The arrested accused had adopted the method of disposing of the stolen money through credit card bill payments. After this the amount was transferred to the main ringleaders through cash or CDM machines. In return for this work he used to take 10 percent commission. The shocking thing is that the arrested accused include a civil engineer and a B.Com graduate. In the greed to earn more money in less time, these educated youth became part of interstate cyber gangs. During police investigation, 227 credit cards, two POS machines and transaction records worth Rs 92 lakh 53 thousand 663 have been recovered from Ashwin Gangani’s office. Police have arrested Nishit Nathwani of Rajkot, Gautam Mandal of Jamtara, Jharkhand and Ashwin Narsinghbhai of Surat in this case and started further investigation. Cyber Crime Cell has appealed to the people to avoid downloading any unknown APK file or link and report suspicious messages immediately.

