Eight persons were arrested for allegedly porting mobile phone numbers without Know Your Customer documents and providing them to cyber fraudsters to create Whatsapp groups for online cheating, a police official said on Thursday.
The arrests were made by the cyber police station of the Mumbai crime branch, he added.
The arrested persons include employees of two leading mobile phone service providers and shop owners, the official added.
"These Whatsapp groups were used to lure people into bogus share investments and trade. The eight-member gang has sold at least 3,000 numbers in this illegal way. The fraudsters have cheated people of several crore rupees. The probe began after a man lodged a complaint that he was cheated of Rs 51.33 lakh between May 14 and June 28 this year," he said.
"Our probe found that his number was added in a Whatsapp group with the help of a SIM card that was ported illegally using UPC code," he added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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