INDORE: Indore cell of state cyber police on Wednesday arrested two persons for duping e-commerce websites of lakhs of rupees by making purchases and seeking refunds by claiming that the items were not received. The accused transacted using SIM cards linked with Aadhaar cards of unsuspecting individuals that were up for sale illegally on WhatsApp groups.

Twenty Aadhaar card linked SIM cards, items bought from e-commerce websites and six smart phones were recovered from their possession.

A nexus of minors, who had been duping people of cash by hacking into different online wallets, was busted recently in which it was found that over 11,000 people, mostly youngsters, were involved from 22 states including Madhya Pradesh. They had created over 52 WhatsApp groups on which such illegal information like leaked data and OTPs were being shared.

During probe in the case, cyber police came across a man from Rajasthan, who was selling Aadhaar-linked SIM cards to these youths. He had also sent a speed post receipt to the arrested accused Sohail Patel in which the delivery details were mentioned.

“We tracked down the address and reached Vikas Parihar following which many other details came up,” said cyber cell SP Jitendra Singh.

Two youths including Vikas Singh Parihar (22) of Shahdol, currently living in Jawahar Nagar and Prince Kumar (19), who has been staying in Lasudia area, were tracked down.

During questioning, cops learnt that a channelised nexus was being operated across the country in which the accused were creating fake IDs using Aadhaar-linked SIM cards on e-commerce websites and asking for a refund by claiming that they did not receive the parcel. The accused would then sell the items on OLX and earn money. In this way, the youths duped such companies of lakhs of rupees.

The accused told police that they wanted to become ethical hackers and had been using the latest VPN and emulator technologies to hide their identities.

They had been linking the Paytm accounts to Aadhaar cards owned by some other unsuspecting people. The Aadhaar-linked SIM cards were being made available by telecommunication retail outlets in Odisha and Rajasthan. The accused would get the thumb impression of a person and link it to several SIM cards of different companies and then sell them at different rates.

