Credit card fraud: Delhi resident duped of Rs 1.46 lakh; data of over 1 crore people leaked

New Delhi: Amidst the ongoing tension of online cheats blackmailing innocent persons after obtaining their card details and looting money from their accounts, one more member of this gang was arrested for allegedly supplying complete data of credit cards to operators of fake call centers.

On the basis of this data, scam callers call innocent persons, giving an impression that they are calling from their bank and seek the required information necessary to transfer their money.

The incident came to light after a complaint was lodged by Shushil Chandra Rastogi, a resident of GK-1, New Delhi, alleging that someone called him to say that his Citibank credit card has been blocked and if he wants to reactivate it, some details are required.

After giving the details, he found that Rs 1.46 lakh was transferred to payment merchants such as PayU, Paytm, Olacabs, Mobikwik, and Vodafone bill.

Post this, a case was registered at a police station in Greater Kailash and investigation was handed over to Sub-Inspector Kuldeep Singh.

During the course of investigation, Ashish Kumar Jha, one of the accused, was arrested on April 4 from Jahangirpuri, Delhi.

In 2013, he started tele-calling for selling health insurance via his own web-portal.

For that purpose, he used to purchase data from data providers and this gave him the idea to indulge in online credit card cheating.

The accused then disclosed that he was running a call centre to gain access to their credit card details.

This data was purchased by him from one Puran Gupta, who had provided the required data of credit cards to him.

Subsequently, on Monday, Gupta was arrested from his office in South Ganesh Nagar.

On sustained interrogation, the 33-year old Gupta disclosed that he used to provide data/ details of different categories/profiles of persons as required by his clients.

In 2010 he created a firm called "first step services and solutions".

This firm was created for data collection, data entry, data market research and online promotion.

The data contained in his laptop as well as his email has been analysed and found that he is in possession of data of almost one crore people.

He has stored the data in different folders with different categories as per requirement of his clients.

With regard to credit card data, the miscreants use this to target persons and convince them that they are legitimate bank authorised callers.

When they call a target, they state the card number, card holder name and date of birth, so that the target is tricked into confidence in believing them.

The main supplier of credit card data to him from Mumbai is yet to be arrested.

Puran Gupta has been sent to Police custody while further investigation is carried on.