How a phone ordered from Jamtara by a deceitful Rajkot man became a legitimate buy in Kolkata: Three states, three phones, one gang

Police in Gujarat and West Bengal are searching for an interstate gang, focusing on an illegal supply chain that does not recognize borders or has one that blurs the lines between India's legitimate and illegal markets. When a well-known lawyer in Kolkata bought a cell phone for his wife at the end of June this year, officers became involved. He had little idea that a Gujarati police squad would find his house by following the device's IMEI information and seize the Samsung phone a few days later.

Although the phone had not been used to commit any crimes, the lawyer was informed that the gadget had been bought with the profits of criminal activity. Cybercriminals from the infamous Jamtara in Jharkhand are said to have bought it from an online marketplace. They deceived a man from Rajkot almost 2,000 kilometers away by tricking him into providing them with OTPs under the pretense of a KYC update process. Soon after, the phone was labeled as "evidence," and a new case—this time in West Bengal—was started.

On April 7 of this year, the Rajkot city Cybercrime Police received a complaint from a person involved in the construction industry, which sparked the start of the inquiry. According to the lawsuit, he was allegedly asked to complete a KYC process for his credit card by unidentified individuals posing as bank representatives. He said that there was a problem with the process's completion and that impersonators repeatedly begged him to provide them with OTPs.

In the meantime, the cybercriminals were utilizing the victim's card information to order mobile phones from the online retailer Flipkart and were enticing him to provide them with the OTPs in order to complete the transactions. They spent Rs 5,62,874 on three cell phones, two of which were iPhones and one was a Samsung model, according to Rajkot Cyber Crime Police station PI Savraj D Gilva. Following their acquisition of information about these purportedly illegal transactions from Flipkart, the police placed the three devices' 15-digit IMEI identifiers under surveillance in the hopes of physically locating them once they were powered on.

When the Samsung model was turned on and a SIM card was inserted into the cellphone at the end of June, the police eventually received a lead. Kolkata was the location of the phone. The police targeted the lawyer's home after sending a team to West Bengal that included two constables and a sub-inspector. It was the home of a well-known attorney from Kolkata who works for the Calcutta High Court. According to PI Gilva, "the team discovered his wife using the phone."

In addition to the cell phone's box, the lawyer provided a GST bill and the specifics of the online transaction when requested for evidence of purchase, demonstrating that he had paid Rs 49,000 for the device. "The attorney informed us that he had bought the phone in person from a large store in Kolkata and that he had no cause to suspect that this was an unsuccessful transaction. Consequently, he became the second victim of this illegal operation, Gilva added.

The police squad arrived at the store in Bowbazar, North Kolkata. The Rajkot Cyber Crime police made an effort to determine where the business had bought the phone, but they were unable to track down the store owner.

The attorney then went to the Hare Street police station and accused the shop owner of fraud and deceit . Since the cellphone store was under their jurisdiction, the FIR was moved to the Bowbazar police station. The store owner also produced a bill proving he had bought the phone from his distributor when Bowbazar police spoke with him.

Inspector Arupkumar Banerjee of the Bowbazar police station told The Indian Express that the complainant who acquired the phone was not aware that it was obtained from criminal proceeds. The Gujarat police notified him of this after he had inserted the SIM. Thus, he lodged the grievance. We are currently looking into the situation. "The FIR was initially filed against the store owner, but he had purchased the phone against a bill and he also did not know (the provenance)," Inspector Banerjee stated when questioned about the FIR. It is a chain and will take some time to get to the source because he bought it from his distributor on GST and then sold it with a bill.

"During the probe, we came to know that the fraudsters who impersonated bank officials were based out of Jamtara in Jharkhand," PI Gilva said in reference to the cyber scam that the Rajkot man was a victim of. They selected Kolkata as the delivery location for the phones when they made the unlawful transaction. We sent a team to Jamtara to try to find the source using WhatsApp IP addresses, but they were unable to do so since the phones used for the cybercrime may have been thrown away. The authorities are currently conducting investigations in an attempt to track down the two iPhones and link the phone to the gang.

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