Four arrested for creating fake website, duping over 1,800 pensioners

New Delhi, Jan 18 (IANS) The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations unit of the Delhi Police has arrested four men for stealing data from a government portal and creating a fake website following which they duped more than 1,800 pensioners.

The accused were identified as Amit Khosa, a resident of Greater Noida; Kanav Kapoor from Noida; Binoy Sarkar and Shankar Mondal, both from Hyderabad.

The Central government's Jeevan Pramaan portal (www.jeevanpramaan.gov.in) is a biometric enabled digital service for pensioners.

The accused created the fake website, jeevanpraman.online, to cheat the beneficiaries.

It offered to generate a life certificate and the procedure for the same. Majority of the content was copied from the actual government website.

According to Prashant Gautam, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO), the police had recently received a complaint from the National Informatics Centre about the creation of the fake website.

"The majority of the content was copied from the actual government portal and they were accepting payments through this fake website from the customers for Jeevanpramaan services," said the DCP.

"It was also observed that the fake website was also integrated with a payment gateway and accepting money from the customers for Jeevanpramaan services. The accused were charging Rs 199 from the pensioners. The pensioners were asked to fill up a form with their full details to get a life certificate."

The IFSO unit of Special Cell lodged an FIR in this connection under sections 419 (impersonating), 420 (cheating) of the IPC read with sections 66-D of the Income Tax Act.

"To nab the accused, the police team gathered technical information of the alleged website, bank and call details from the website registrar, banks. The information was further scrutinised and on the basis of technical investigation, the team identified and apprehended the accused persons after conducting raids in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana," said the DCP.

The official said that Kanav came in touch with Amit and they started this scam after developing a fake website.

"Kanav had been previously arrested in a similar case for making a fake website. He used to get 50 per cent of the amount, while Amit had earlier worked as a stock market analyst. He used to get 35 per cent of the amount," said the official.

"Binoy Sarkar had provided the bank details of co-accused Shankar to Amit and he used to get 5 per cent of the amount while Shankar used to get 10 per cent of the amount."