In a major breakthrough, cyber cops at the Cyber Police Station arrested five cyber criminals involved in defrauding over Rs2 crore from the accountant of cabinet minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi. The fraudsters had contacted the victim via WhatsApp, using the profile picture of the minister’s son, Abhishek Gupta.
The police also managed to freeze Rs12.22 lakh that the criminals had transferred to various bank accounts. While some of the culprits have been apprehended, efforts are ongoing to trace the other fraudsters involved in this scam, according to police officials.
On November 13, Ritesh Srivastava, the minister’s accountant, received a message from a WhatsApp number displaying the profile picture of Abhishek Gupta, the company director and Nandi’s son. Posing as Gupta, the cyber criminals instructed Srivastava to transfer Rs2.08 crore into three different bank accounts, claiming the money was required for finalizing business deals.
Suspicious of the request, Srivastava eventually realized he was being scammed and reported the incident. The Cyber Police Station swiftly registered an FIR and launched an investigation
The investigation, led by Inspector Rajeev Tiwari, resulted in the arrest of five individuals from Bareilly, Dehradun, and other districts. The arrested individuals were identified as:
- Divyanshu Singh
- Pulkit Dwivedi
- Sanjeev Kumar Rai
- Surjeet Singh
- Vijay Kumar
The arrested fraudsters were found to have transferred Rs12.22 lakh from the stolen funds into various accounts. The cyber cops successfully froze this amount as part of their investigation.