Mumbai Police Arrest Two in ₹48.60 Lakh CEO WhatsApp Impersonation Scam
The Mumbai Police cybercrime department has arrested two men from Bihar and Jharkhand for allegedly defrauding an accountant at a Mumbai pipe company of ₹48.60 lakh in a CEO impersonation fraud on WhatsApp. The accused were produced before the Girgaon magistrate court on August 19, which remanded them to police custody until August 25.
According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (South Cybercrime) Bajrang Balsode, the accountant was contacted on WhatsApp by an unknown number displaying the name and profile photograph of his company's CEO. The fraudster claimed he was occupied in a meeting and urgently needed money transferred. Believing the request was genuine, the accountant transferred ₹48.60 lakh, which investigators later traced to a mule bank account in Kolkata.
Following a complaint registered on February 26 under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act, investigators traced the bogus SIM card to Rukundi Pur in Bihar. Police arrested Aamir Chand Mohammad Khan, a point-of-sale Airtel SIM vendor, on August 14. His interrogation led to the arrest of his accomplice, Suraj Kumar Pradeep Kumar Saw, also known as Vishal, near Jamtara in Jharkhand on August 16.
Assistant Police Inspector Ramdas Gopal stated that the SIM card used in the fraud originally belonged to an Indian Army soldier who had attempted to port his mobile connection while on leave in Bihar. Khan completed the e-KYC verification but falsely informed the soldier that the process had failed due to a system error. Khan then retained the active SIM and sent it to Saw in Jharkhand. Investigators found that Khan had also fraudulently activated other SIM cards using misused documents, allegedly selling eight cards to Saw for ₹6,000 via UPI.
Police seized 161 SIM cards, a megaphone, and a mobile phone equipped with the Airtel Mitra application from the accused. Officers have held the entire defrauded amount of ₹48.60 lakh.
Investigators also linked the two suspects to seven other cyber fraud cases across Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Mumbai.
