Odisha police busts racket involved in selling up pre-activated SIM cards
By Sukant Mohanty
BHUBANESWAR, MARCH 18: The Odisha police has busted a racket involved in preparing and supplying pre-activated mobile phone SIM cards to fraudsters. Two persons have been arrested in this connection while around 250 pre-activate SIM cards of various service provider companies have been seized from their possession, the police said on Friday.
Cuttack deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Prateek Singh said that the two accused- Sushant Behera and Sankar Adhikari- are officials of a telecom service provider. Their activities surfaced during the probe into a cyber-cheating case to the tune of Rs 4 lakh.
The accused allegedly used to supply huge quantities of pre-activated SIM cards from Odisha to cyber fraudsters in Jamtara and Deoghar in Jharkhand and other states, police said.
On February 28, one Dr Jayadeb Jena (66) a visiting professor at Ravenshaw University alleged that some miscreants swindled around Rs 4 lakh from his bank account. During the probe, it was ascertained that the fraudsters impersonating BSNL officials told the victim that his SIM card would be blocked if he failed to recharge and asked to download two apps- ‘Team Viewer and SMS Forwarding.’
According to Singh, while activating SIM cards of customers, the fraudsters would take their photographs on the pretext that their previous picture was not good. Later, they would use the photographs to activate a different SIM card.
“Using such method, they used to activate multiple SIM cards by using the customers’ details without their knowledge,” Singh added
In another development, the Odisha police arrested a person from Andheri East in Mumbai for duping many people from the state. The arrested man was identified as Sundaram Charan.
According to police, Sundaram used to collect details about various bank account holders through his links in Odisha and provide them to cyber crooks of Jamtara in Jharkhand. The police arrested the accused after camping in Mumbai for 15 days as the latter continuously changed his places.
Sundaram allegedly facilitated the selling of 16,000 SIM cards to the Jamtara gang.
