Airtel Two Managers Arrest: Amidst the ever increasing cyber crime in the country, the police in Gurugram have arrested 2 managers of Airtel. Who have been accused of providing virtual phone numbers to cyber criminals of Indonesia and China. This arrest was made jointly by Cyber Crime Station East Police and Indian Cyber Coordination Center (I4C) MHA. In this case, the telecom company has suspended both the employees.
Read :- Supreme Court reprimanded SBI, ordered to pay Rs 94,000 to the customer who was a victim of cyber fraud.
According to media reports, both Airtel managers were arrested following a complaint by a victim of cyber fraud. Both the accused have been identified as Neeraj Walia and Hemant Sharma. Both of them were working as Senior Manager and Site Verification Manager of Airtel. They are accused of providing virtual SIM numbers to thugs sitting in Indonesia and China. The company used to get Rs 8 to 10 lakh as bills every month from the numbers provided by these managers. Police have recovered two mobile phones used in carrying out the fraud.
Investigation revealed that the virtual phone number used to contact the victim belonged to a fraud company named Ekamdarsh Services Pvt Ltd, which had a Dundahera address mentioned in its documents. However, on visiting the location no such company was found. Police found that the virtual number was issued by Neeraj and Hemant. According to ACP Priyanshu Diwan, Neeraj used to handle the site verification required for issuing phone numbers in Airtel. Whereas, Hemant was his team leader. Both of them issued a DID (Direct Inward Dialing) virtual landline number to the fake company in violation of TRAI rules.
The victim had said in her complaint that she lost Rs 10,000 due to scammers offering work from home. According to a Times of India report, the STD code of the number used by the scammers to contact the victim was of Gurugram. According to the victim, she had received a call from a number. The caller offered a part time job. There was talk of earning money by posting reviews of different hotels. As soon as he completed the task, Rs 200 was transferred to his bank account. After that the accused added him to the Telegram group. While giving the task, small amounts were transferred to the account two-three times. After this he was cheated by taking huge amount of money in the name of investment.
The investigation into this case may reveal many numbers which were wrongly issued by the accused. Police have found evidence of issuing numbers and connections of cloud based services to other companies in the WhatsApp group of the accused, regarding which police teams have started investigation. The accused have been taken on police remand for questioning. The ACP said, 'We have found evidence in a WhatsApp group, which revealed that the accused has issued virtual phone numbers to many more companies without proper verification. We are currently investigating the validity of these companies and also finding out how the numbers were used. At present, the police have registered a case against the accused under BNS sections 318 (4) (cheating), 319 (cheating by impersonation), and 61 (2) (criminal conspiracy).
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