Gurgaon: College student by day, a teacher in his free time. And quite sought after at that. A 21-year-old man was arrested on March 1 from a village in Bundi district of Rajasthan for allegedly training around 500 youngsters from his village on ways to defraud people online. Yogesh Meena was apprehended along with three others he had trained — one of them a minor.Yogesh, police said, is behind at least 50 cases of cyber fraud committed in the past one year. Police recovered a gold ring from Yogesh and Rs 82,000 cash and four cellphones from the other three accused.However, when the cops visited the two villages where youths were allegedly being trained in cyber fraud, most of the houses were locked.According to police, Yogesh picked up youths for training from three villages of Bundi and Sawai Madhopur districts — Rawal, Babai and Chamanganj. A student pursuing a BA degree at a college in Sawai Madhopur, he is believed to have learnt the art of conning from another villager. Police said they were looking for his “mentor”. “He engaged the youths in hour-long classes and taught them how to operate Telegram channels and speak to potential targets so that they were lured to invest,” said Sandeep Ahlawat, inspector (cybercrime) in Manesar.The fraudsters were taught to mimic salespersons of popular trading platforms. They would randomly add people to the Telegram groups — posing as brokers and sending deceptive stock postings to lure people to invest through them. Once they received money from the victims, they would block their numbers or disable their Telegram channels.The search for Yogesh started when the cybercrime branch of police received a complaint about a Rs 1 lakh fraud in Sept last year. “Like the others, this complainant, too, was added to a Telegram channel by the fraudsters who offered promising returns on his investment in stock trading. They made fake promises to provide handsome returns and fleeced Rs 1 lakh from the victim,” said Priyanshu Dewan, ACP (cybercrime).Based on the complaint, a case was registered under IPC Section 420 (cheating) against unknown persons. The money trail led the investigators to a bank account linked to Dayaram Meena (19), where some of the amount had been transferred.Dayaram, a Class 11 student from Babai, was nabbed on March 1. He spilled the beans on Yogesh, who was from Rawal.Arrested, Yogesh confessed to having trained at least 500 youths in cyber con jobs — a module that attracted the country’s attention to Jamtara, a small town in Jharkhand. “Dayaram even gave Yogesh a gold ring for his training,” inspector Ahlawat said.Vikas Meena from Chamanganj and a 15-year-old juvenile from Bundi, both trained by Yogesh, were held the same day. While Dayaram cheated 30 people, Vikas conned 12 and the juvenile scammed four.Among the accused, Yogesh has a criminal record. He was booked in an Arms Act case earlier, the ACP said.
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