Under the guidance and supervision of SSP Patiala Sh Varun Sharma, IPS, the cyber crime team of Patiala Police under Aaswant Singh, PPS, SP Cyber Crime and Economic Offences, Patiala and Tarandeep Kaur, SHO PS Cyber Crime Patiala has busted a Patiala based gang that was providing bank accounts and mobile SIMs to Philippines based cyber fraudsters in lieu of money and has arrested 4 members of the gang so far.
The gang comprising of Pankaj, Arshdeep and Manga Singh (all residents of Patiala) lured innocent youngsters for opening new bank accounts in their name on the pretext of creating salary accounts for them for a fictitious new job. The ATM card and Net Banking details of the account were kept by the gang. These bank accounts and their Net Banking details were then sold to Philippines based cyber fraudsters Babu and Sumi who are also of Punjabi origin.
One saving bank account was sold for 10,000 each whereas a current bank account was sold for 40,000 each. So far more than 30 such bank accounts have been sold to Philippines based cyber fraudsters by this gang which have been used to route crores of fraud money within a few months.
Complete transaction details of these mule bank accounts are being obtained. Similarly, the gang operated an unauthorised de-addiction centre on Chaura Road, Patiala for some time and the drug addicts were lured with Rs 500 per SIM to purchase new SIMs in their name and provide to the gang.
These SIMs were then further sold by this gang to Philippines based cyber fraudsters and were sent to Philippines through courier by sewing them in folds of T-shirts. So far this gang has sent around 50 SIMs through couriers to Philippines.
These SIMs are used by cyber fraudsters to call innocent people in India for committing cyber fraud with them. All these SIM cards were purchased without proper verification from a single shop named Digital Zone.
The owner of the shop Birbal s/o Krishan Chand has also now been arrested. FIR No 29 dated 27.08.2025 u/s 316(2), 318(4), 336(3), 338, 340 (2), 351 (2), 61 (2) BNS and 66 C IT Act PS Cyber Crime Patiala has been registered and 4 accused have been arrested so far.
Further investigation is on to obtain complete details about Babu and Sumi based in Philippines to unearth the complete cyber fraud nexus.