17-year-old revealed to be true handler of gang that poses as IPS officers

The 47yearold man who was thought to be the main handler of the racket where citizens were targeted by crooks posing as senior officials has revealed that his 17yearold son is in fact the one operating the entire racketThe accused who was arrested by the Bangur Nagar Link Road police on Saturday in Visakhapatnam had thought his teenage son who eventually superseded him the tricks of the trade The teen is known as lsquoDon VIPrsquo by fellow scamsters During his interrogation the accused stated that his entire family has been involved in the racket for the past two yearsldquoThe gang members would call victims pretending to be customs officials and tell them that a parcel had arrived in their name in which drugs had been found Later a Skype call bearing the name of a DCPrank officer from the cyber crime branch would be made to the victims and they would be summoned to the police station for an inquiry After threatening to arrest their terrified prey the scamsters would demand money to settle the matter Cases of this nature have been registered recently at the Bangur Nagar Link Road Vanrai and other police stations in the city a police officer said He added ldquoThe accused had duped two Punebased women of Rs 689 lakh while posing as DCP Zone XI Ajaykumar BansalrdquoAlso Read Mumbai cops nab Nigerian running job racket from DelhiUnder the guidance of the actual DCP Bansal Senior Inspector Pramod Tavde of the Bangur Nagar Link Road police station formed a team led by the API Vivek Tambe and API Rahul Bhadarge who are part of the cyber unit and arrested two people each from Titwala and Kolkata last month The same team nabbed the 47yearold on SaturdayAn officer said ldquoDuring the inquiry and interrogation of the arrested handler it was revealed that his family was illicitly earning one per cent commission or approximately R10 lakh per day Investigations revealed that approximately R5 to 10 crore would get deposited in various bank accounts and the handler would transfer funds to the mastermind who is in ChinardquoldquoAround R25 lakh had been transferred to the accuseds wifes accounts which we have frozen with the help of banks After crosschecking the bank statements of the four accused arrested earlier and interrogating them we came to know that the 47yearold was referred to as DON VIP but when we caught the man himself we learnt that Don VIP was actually his minor son Hundreds are working for the boyrdquo he saidAccording to the police the teen had asked all the gang members to install an SMSforwarder application on their phones which would divert all information pertaining to bank transactions to his devices ldquoThus the actual account holders did not receive messages from the bank and did not even know how much amount had been deposited and withdrawn from their accountsrdquo an officer said DCP Ajaykumar Bansal said ldquoThe Bangur Nagar cyber cell officials have done remarkable work and busted the first such racket in the city More arrests are likely in the coming daysrdquoApr 29Day 47yearold was arrested