Shaheed Nagar Police in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday arrested seven persons, including two employees of a private telecom company, for illegally obtaining pre-activated SIM cards and supplying them to cybercriminals in other states.
BHUBANEAWAR: Shaheed Nagar police in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday arrested seven persons, including two employees of a private telecom company, for illegally obtaining pre-activated SIM cards and supplying them to cybercriminals in other states.
The police seized over 16,100 undocumented SIM cards of Vodafone, BSNL, Jio and Airtel service providers and 110 mobile phones from the accused, who were identified as Maheswar Barik (38), Rajanikant Panigrahi (30), Subrat Kumar Panigrahi (24), engineering , Sukant Kumar Das (30), engineering, Srinibas Ghadai (21), Rajesh Sethy (29) and Mangalamaya Mishra (27).
Police said Maheshwar and Rajinikanth were working as a direct sales executive and regional sales executive respectively with a private telecom service provider. Subrata and Sukant were engineering graduates.
“The accused produced forged documents with the connivance and connivance of some private telecom employees to obtain an already active SIM. The motive is to commit or facilitate the commission of an offense by concealing one’s identity and using registered phone numbers in the names of other persons to mislead the police. This is an act of identity theft and impersonation,” said Director General of Police Abhay.
Police Commissioner Soumendra Priyadarshi said the gang had supplied over two lakh pre-activated SIMs to cybercriminals in other states, mostly Haryana and Delhi. The police are confused as to how the accused managed to get a large number of SIM cards through impersonation and activate them by telecom companies without verifying any valid documents. Police suspect that the targets set by telcos to sell SIM cards may prompt some sales staff to resort to illegal practice.
“We are in the process of identifying the entire nexus and network having interstate ramifications. More arrests are likely. We are trying to find out how they came in contact with interstate criminals for supplying pre-activated SIMs. The arrested persons were not directly involved in any cyber crime but helped in the crime by supplying the SIM,” Priyadarshi said.
Sources said that the accused sold each pre-activated SIM for Rs 500. “Initially, some of the accused purchased a large number of pre-activated SIM cards to avail cashback offers on various e-commerce portals through prior registration with a new mobile number. Later, they contacted some cybercriminals through YouTube and other websites and supplied them with pre-activated SIMs,” said another police officer.
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