Ranchi court sentences 5 Jamtara cyber criminals to 5 years of rigorous imprisonment

New Delhi: A special PMLA court in Jharkhand has sentenced five Jamtara district residents to five years of rigorous imprisonment under the anti-money laundering law for duping numerous individuals through vishing, the Enforcement Directorate said on Wednesday.

The court in Ranchi had convicted the five on July 20 and their quantum of sentence was announced on Tuesday.

In vishing or voice phishing, callers impersonate legitimate companies to steal money or trick victims into providing their personal and financial information.

A 2020 Netflix series titled Jamtara is based on real-life incidents of vishing and bank account scamming by some criminals from this district, earning it the moniker of "cybercrime capital".

Comprehensive action was launched by police and other probe agencies against these criminals, many of whom were youngsters.

Those sentenced by the court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) are Ganesh Mandal (51), his son Pradeep Kumar Mandal (30), Santosh Mandal (51) and his sons Pintu Mandal (33) and Ankush Kumar Mandal (27), the ED said in a statement.

All of them are residents of Mirga village under Narayanpur police station area.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 2.5 lakh on each of the convicts. Failure to pay the fine would result in an additional six months of simple imprisonment, the agency said.

The court also confiscated the attached and seized properties of the accused worth about Rs 68 lakh, it said.

"The accused have been habitual offenders and were involved in similar offences at other places as well," it said.

The ED slapped criminal charges under the PMLA against these cyber criminals after taking cognisance of a Jharkhand Police FIR and charge sheet that charged them with illegal withdrawal and transfer of money from ATMs and bank accounts of gullible people by posing as bank officials.

The federal probe agency had filed a charge sheet against the five accused in May 2019 followed by a supplementary charge sheet in September 2022.

According to the ED probe, the accused used to gather mobile numbers of bank customers from the internet and through other means. Posing as bank officials or employees, the accused would call these people and dupe them by threatening to block their debit cards or bank accounts.

They obtained OTPs through the phone calls made to the bank customers and then used them to siphon off money from their bank accounts. They deposited these funds using different modes like IMPS, UPI, digital wallets like Paytm, Mpesa and PhonePay, etc. in their names, the agency said.

The accused used to transfer these funds to their personal bank accounts and further used them for purchasing movable and immovable properties, it said.

The accused, the ED said, also used these funds for "their daily domestic expenses as well as for a lavish lifestyle".

"A number of such bank accounts, used to park the proceeds of crime by the accused persons, were identified during the course of investigation and the balances lying therein were frozen," the ED said.

It said several mobile phones and bank accounts which were "instrumental" in the commission of the offence were also seized or frozen.

Seventy-six cybercrime cases were reported and 187 fraudsters were arrested in Jamtara, around 210 km from Ranchi, in 2021. At least 72 cases were registered and 97 fraudsters were arrested in cyber crime cases in 2022.