The Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh, India, uncovered a Bihar-based gang case, after their arrest, that cheated on several naive aspirants by posting fake overseas job postings and conducting transactions in bitcoin to avoid getting tracked.
An Indian police team has arrested Bittu Yadav, Rakesh Kumar and Pradeep Deo from Chinhat, Uttar Pradesh. The police recovered 16 ATM cards, 2 PAN cards, a Driving License, and Rs 21,300 cash.
SSP at Special Task Force Rajeev Mishra told TOI that as soon as the team received information on the gang duping innocent jobseekers was an active cell in Kushinagar and Lucknow, a team zeroed in on the accused and arrested them. The three gang members even tricked Indians living abroad in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.
Shocking reveal!
While explaining the functioning of the fraud unit, SSP told how the gang worked in a three-step process involving a scammer, bitcoin vendor, and pickers.
The scammer, who was the main head of the operation, paid the bitcoin vendor and pickers their part of the commission after completing the task. He posted job ads asking job seekers to contact him, and as soon as an aspirant would contact for work, the picker would then demand a payment in bitcoin as a form of registration charge.
The pickers would use multiple bank accounts to dodge police scanner, and once they receive the amount from the aspirants, they deducted their commission. They transferred the remaining amount to a bitcoin vendor, who then converted the money in cryptocurrency and moved it to the main scammer’s wallet.
The police reported that the arrested pickers revealed other active pickers in the region. For now, police have retained the statement of bank accounts and transactions made with them.
