Gurugram man held for cyber fraud linked to 85 cases

A 33-year-old man was arrested following a raid in Gurugram’s IT Park for allegedly running a fake manpower recruitment company, officials said on Sunday.

The accused, identified as Muneer Khan alias Sahil Sharma, was linked to 85 cybercrime complaints across the country.

Police said the case stemmed from a theft complaint filed on May 22 in which the stolen iPhone was connected to the complainant’s bank account.

“After obtaining a duplicate SIM card on May 26, the complainant received alerts for nine unauthorised UPI transactions amounting to Rs 3.98 lakh,” they said.

An FIR was registered, and a probe was launched.

In an official statement, police said that the team discovered Rs 1 lakh from the defrauded amount was transferred to an account in Telangana and then routed to another account in the name of Meraaki Manpower Services Private Limited.

KYC verification of the company showed the registered address had been vacated. Persistent surveillance traced its functioning to Gurugram, leading to the arrest of Khan, a resident of Asoti village in Haryana’s Palwal district, the statement added.

Khan, a Class 12 graduate, had earlier been arrested in a rape case in Uttam Nagar and spent around four-and-a-half years in judicial custody, police said.

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He allegedly set up the manpower company along with associates Shubham, Mukim and Munjir to launder cybercrime proceeds through multiple current accounts opened in the firm’s name.

During the raid, police recovered 200 cheques of four banks and four debit cards linked to suspected fraud-related accounts.

Data from the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) has linked the company’s accounts to 85 cybercrime complaints from across India, involving amounts running into lakhs of rupees. The exact volume of fraudulent transactions is being assessed.

Efforts to track down Khan’s associates are underway.