Three financial fraud suspects arrested for posing as bank employees in Islamabad

Three financial fraud suspects arrested for posing as bank employees in Islamabad

Those arrested belonged to a gang renowned for its involvement in fraud through financial scams and for posing as bank workers in Islamabad.

According to official sources, the arrests were made by the Cyber Crime Circle of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in a notable move towards curbing online financial crimes.

The accused, Mohammad Adnan, Shahbaz Akhtar, and Mohammad Irfan, were arrested after a thorough investigation.

The FIA officials said that the three posed as bank officers and approached several citizens with various pretexts. They obtained susceptible banking information and illegally accessed three bank accounts, stealing over Rs. 9 million.

The operation was carried out on the orders of Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who is allegedly actively monitoring a crackdown against cybercrime in Pakistan.

Besides registering an FIR against the suspects, the FIA has started an investigation to capture the remaining members of the gang, including its ring leader, because they are notorious for committing such crimes.

The whereabouts of Kony and Dominic are now in the hands of technology after their arrest, when killers led security agencies to them. Earlier this year, the FIA arrested a female member of an online fraud gang that robbed citizens' bank accounts.

Those gang members cheated several people for big bucks. FIA officials said the racket prepared a modus operandi by exploiting technical deficiencies in online banking systems, allowing unauthorized money transfers from victims' accounts to those controlled by them.

Police said the arrested woman used to contact customers' banks over mobile phones and obtain valuable information, which she later used to carry out fraudulent transactions.

In its investigation, the agency found the gang's activities and detected that they had earned crores from their illegal activities. The arrested woman confessed to the agency her role in the dubious withdrawal and transfer of Rs1,880,000 from one bank customer account.

The suspect's additional revelations about the gang's modus operandi revealed that it operated with sophistication, using state-of-the-art technology to deceive its victims. Through recordings of bank audio impersonating actual calls and different proxies, the criminals masqueraded as bank heads during the commission of crime just to deceive victims.

Their game plan includes getting into a victim's network and then quickly moving large amounts to mule accounts in less than 48 hours—just like Ki K.