Beware! Your PAN, Aadhaar cards can be sold for Rs 100

Ludhiana: In a joint operation, Ludhiana police cyber cell, CIA-II and counter-intelligence busted a gang of inter-state cyber fraudsters with the arrest of seven.
Besides availing loans on fraudulently-procured ID proofs, the accused also assisted other cyber criminals. With their arrest, the city police have learned about a racket that was selling Aadhaar and PAN cards of gullible people for merely Rs 100 to cyber criminals.
The arrested have been identified as Vijay Kumar Bittu of Krishna Nagar, Anshuman Singh of Lakshmi Nagar, Sushil Kumar Patel of Mahadev Nagar, Sooraj of Makkar Colony, Sanjay Kumar of Prem Nagar, Rohit of Bhora Colony and Ram Narayan of Lakshmi Nagar. The police have recovered Rs 5.45 lakh, 11 mobile phones, three credit cards, 17 SIM cards, two laptops, one scanner, one coloured printer, 45 PAN cards, six memory cards and 11 debit cards from their possession.
Commissioner of police Rakesh Agarwal said, “Among these seven, Rohit is a courier boy, who was aware that the accused were using ID proofs of other people. He used to deliver the debit cards issued by banks to them at different places. All the accused are matriculate, but have so much knowledge that they can easily dupe people. Other six cyber fraudsters are a part of the inter-state gang. They used different modus operandi for different types of crimes. They all are from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, but were operating from Giaspura in Ludhiana.”
“This gang also provided genuine Aadhaar and PAN cards to other cyber criminals for online frauds and helped them in opening bank accounts using these ID proofs. These documents were also used to avail loans online, as there are some mobile applications like Dhani and Red Carpet that give loans without verification. By getting new SIM cards, they managed to get several cashbacks on different mobile applications,” added Agarwal.
The accused had been active for the past one year, during which they created more than 100 bank accounts to deposit ill-gotten money.
Additional deputy commissioner of police (crime) Rupinder Kaur Bhatti, who is also heading the cyber cell, said, “The accused were aware that the instant accounts of some banks can be opened easily without physical verification. They needed bank accounts to deposit the money, so they used this technique. In Punjab, they used to get the bank accounts opened with the IDs of people belonging to UP, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Uttarakhand. Similarly, IDs of Punjab people were sold to the cyber fraudsters of other states.”
ADCP Bhatti added, “All these accused either worked at mobile stores or are distributors of SIM cards, so they were aware of the system. When customers came to them for getting a new SIM card, they kept details of their Aadhaar and PAN cards. The gang leader is at large and police are trying to trace him. He was training some youngsters for these frauds.”