The Ahmedabad crime branch arrested a suspect from Jharkhand on Sept 8, who was part of a criminal syndicate responsible for illicitly extracting e-memo fines from countless vehicle owners, falsely claiming to represent the Ahmedabad traffic police. 

The accused operated a counterfeit website, masquerading as a government platform, to deceive victims into making payments under the guise of e-challans.

An engineered scam debunked

Providing insights into the case, ACP Bharat Patel said: “As part of the Smart City project, Ahmedabad police has deployed CCTV cameras that capture images of traffic violations, which are then transmitted to the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Subsequently, Ahmedabad police issued traffic challans. However, the arrested suspect and his accomplices posed as traffic police officers to identify individuals who had committed traffic violations.

The modus operandi

The suspects’ modus operandi involved visiting an official government website, randomly inputting vehicle numbers from the GJ01 and GJ27 series.

By doing so, they identified traffic offenders with outstanding fines.

They leveraged these numbers on an insurance company’s website to access vehicle owner and violator information, available through a finance company’s insurance portal.

Armed with this data, the suspects would contact traffic rule violators, impersonating Ahmedabad traffic police and demanding payment for purported fines.

Victims initially fell prey to the scam, believing the calls to be genuine, only to discover later that they had been duped, Patel explained.

Who were the fraudsters?

Following a thorough investigation, the Ahmedabad city crime branch filed a case against Sudhanshu alias Chiku Mishra, hailing from Deoghar district in Jharkhand.

Sudhanshu and his associates orchestrated scams targeting numerous traffic violators.

Additional individuals implicated in the scheme, known as Rajesh and Saptam Kumar, are based in Kolkata.

Thus far, the investigation has identified fraudulent activities within Gujarat.

However, as the inquiry unfolds, instances from various states may emerge.

Ahmedabad police recently warned the citizens against a scam link that looks similar to the e-challan link for payment of the e-memos for traffic violations, but it is yet another effort by the fraudsters to prey on the innocent.

(Source: IANS)

-Edited for style

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