372 FIRs, 91 arrests — Delhi Police bust Covid cons who duped those on oxygen, drug hunt

The accused allegedly floated leads for oxygen, home ICU and remdesivir on social media. Delhi Police say they bought SIM cards in one state and used them in another.

Representational image | Cyber crime | Pexels

New Delhi: Ramandeep Singh, a resident of Janakpuri in West Delhi, was in urgent need of an oxygen cylinder. He enquired about it on IndiaMART, an e-commerce platform that connects buyers with suppliers, and was happy to receive a call back from a man he believed to be a vendor. He was quick to transfer Rs 74,480 to the supplier’s account to ensure fast delivery. The cylinder, however, never reached him. Singh had been conned.

Satya Prakash, a resident of Arjun Nagar in Delhi, had a similar experience. In urgent need of the drug remdesivir, he immediately followed up with a lead he received on WhatsApp. The person he contacted said he would get a dose but it would cost him a lot more than the MRP. Prakash agreed without thinking twice and immediately transferred Rs 19,200 to the account mentioned. The medicine never came. It was later discovered that the man he had dealt with was operating this account from Nalanda in Bihar.

The second Covid wave in India has been marked by a massive spurt in infections that has put an unprecedented strain on the country’s health infrastructure. As a result, many relatives and patients have been forced to undertake desperate hunts for equipment like oxygen cylinders and concentrators, and drugs such as remdesivir — even home ICUs — on their own. 

In this situation, social media and other online portals have proved a key resource to amplify requests and get in touch with suppliers, but it also appears to have given cybercriminals a new avenue to exploit. 

The Delhi Police Social Media Monitoring Cell was soon receiving multiple calls about people being defrauded while on the lookout for medical resources online. This spurred a crackdown by Delhi Police that has so far led to 372 FIRs against alleged ‘Covid cheats’ and 91 arrests. 

Police have also seized 95 devices and frozen 214 bank accounts where the alleged proceeds of crime, around Rs 54 lakh, were deposited.

“With uncertainties around several questions related to movements, medicine, oxygen etc, we had started providing some guidance to the general public. But with time, as the situation worsened, there was a sudden and substantial change in the nature of distress calls being received and many people started complaining of being cheated online for essential supplies and lifesaving drugs,” Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Neeraj Thakur said.

It is then that Delhi Police augmented the capacity of its Covid Helpline to handle complaints about such fraud. A system to generate 12-hourly situation reports on complaints and FIRs was also put in place, he added.

SIM cards sourced from one state, used in another 

According to Delhi Police, their analysis of the cases and complaints registered revealed that the majority of the SIM cards used to circulate “leads” about oxygen or drugs were purchased in one state, and used in another to put out information and take calls.

The accounts where the money was deposited were found to be scattered in states across the country, including West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. “This shows how widespread this cybercriminal network is,” Thakur said.

To trace these people and make arrests, the directors general of police across states were contacted by Delhi Police Commissioner S.N. Shrivastava and teams sent there, he added. 

“The police immediately coordinated with other districts, crime branch and CyPAD (Cyber Prevention Awareness Detection unit of Delhi Police) and activated dedicated channels of reporting these frauds,” Thakur said.

Numbers blocked, put on Truecaller 

While police registered cases and froze suspected bank accounts on the one hand, on the other, it sent 861 mobile numbers to the Department of Telecom (DoT) for blocking.

The CyPAD, the focal unit in the operation, reached out to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and, through it, to the national banking & financial sector and the telecom industry regulator, along with leading private players and operators, for help.

According to police, by mid-week of May 2021, the CyPAD was sending out 12-hourly alerts to the I4C, its joint units in Mewat, Jamtara, Ahmadabad, Chandigarh and Hyderabad, as well as the DoT and the banking sector with specific, actionable information. 

This was done to get the beneficiary accounts frozen, to ensure the SIM cards used in the fraud were suspended, and the related IMEIs black-listed. 

Moreover, 168 mobile numbers were tagged as ‘Covid scam’ numbers through TrueCaller, the caller ID app. Subscriber information of 187 numbers and account-holder information for over 300 bank accounts were shared with police in different states for action through the Joint Cyber Coordination Teams of I4C.

‘40% of complaints result in FIRs’ 

According to data available with the MHA, less than 2.5 per cent of complaints in the cybercrime sector result in FIRs. In this case, 40 per cent of 910 complaints — received through either the helpline or email — were converted into FIRs.

In November 2020, the MHA had also written to all states to examine the complaints received on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, and register FIRs.

With all the efforts, Delhi Police said, the cases have started to show a rapid decline and the daily reporting of cases has now come back to the pre-1 May levels.

However, there are still 20 police teams from across India on the ground in several states, and a substantial number of arrests are likely in the coming few days, police added.

(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)