A GANG OF CHEATS TARGETTING TV-HOME SHOPPING VIEWERS BUSTED

A complaint was received from a TV tele-shopping channel alleging that some unscrupulous persons have been falsely inducingcustomers of the tele-shopping channel into believing their false claims and making them to deposit money towards TDS charges, processing fee amounts in fake bank accounts. The accused persons had carried out these acts by using the registered trademark/proprietary mark/logo/image of the Complainant Company by portraying themselves as representatives of the Complainant Company. Such acts by the accused persons had caused huge loss to the goodwill, reputation and money of the complainant's TV channel.Accordingly, a Case vide FIR No. 96/2016, U/s 420/120 B IPC RW 66 C/66 D IT Act was got registered at PS EOW on 20.06.2016.

TEAM AND OPERATION: -

          During further course of investigation it was found that some imposter has been sending forged letter of Tele-Marketing channelto its customers informing them about their name being selected in lucky draw/lottery of the TV channeland advising them to deposit TDS amount/Processing fees in the bank account provided by them. The gullible victims were told that they have won LED TV, motor vehicles etc and they will receive the prize after depositing the TDS and processing fee. The investigation into the trail of dispatched letters revealed that they were being deposited in a particular Post Office for dispatch to gullible victims. Accordingly, a team led by InspectorSatishYadav, Cyber Crime Cell, EOW, was constituted to lay a trap and nab the accused persons.The trap resulted in the red-handed arrest of Tarun Sharma S/o Sh. Shyam Kumar Sharma R/o B-50 Gali No. 5 Mandawali,Unchepur, Delhiand Vishal Nath S/o Sh. Late K. B Nath R/o D-49 Gali No. 8 Mandawali, Unchepur, Delhi.

ARRESTED PERSONS: -

1.      Vishal Nath S/o Sh. Late K. B Nath R/o D-49 Gali No. 8 Mandawali, Unchepur, Delhi.

2.      Tarun Sharma S/o Sh. Shyam Kumar Sharma R/o B-50 Gali No. 5 Mandawali          Unchepur, Delhi.

3.      Dinesh S/o Naubat Ram R/o C-15/4, Gali No. 1, Mandawali, Unchepur, Delhi.

MODUS OPERANDI: -

          Accused persons used to collect the data of home shopping channel customersfrom a call center run by Vishal Nath and thereafter used to call the possible targets by making calls and directing them to deposit certain amount on the pretext of TDS for the amount/commodity won through lottery/lucky draw. Forged lookalike letters of the complainant company were then sent to the possible targets wherein all the relevant details pertaining to the bank account in which the amount was to be deposited were mentioned. This letter used to contain the details of the ‘Order’ which that particular victim had placed with the home shopping channel so that the victim gets a feeling of a genuine communication being carried out.

          The arrested accused Dinesh used to provide them the fictitious bank account in which this cheated amount was used to be deposited by the victims. 

          Through this modus operandi they had cheated hundreds of people and caused wrongful loss of approximately 15 lakhs to their victims.

RECOVERIES:-

          The arrest has yielded recovery of homeshopping channel’s customer’s data, 33 fresh envelopes containing forged letters for new targets, sample letter head of homeshopping channel, 2 cheque books in some fake names, 2 ATM cards, 6 mobile phones, 3 SIMs, 2 Printers and a Laptop. Further investigation is in progress.