With the arrest of 14 persons on Sunday, the Anti-Terrorists Squad (ATS) claimed to have busted a gang selling pre-activated SIM cards for opening online bank accounts for transaction of money gained from unscrupulous activities/unknown sources.  

Nine of the accused were arrested from different districts in west Uttar Pradesh while five were nabbed by the Noida unit of the ATS.

Nine of the arrested acused were identified as Mohammed Fahim, Samul Hasan, Hariom Arora, Chandra Kishore, Tarun Surya and Piyush Varshney, all of Sambhal, Prem Singh of Moradabad, Anshul Kumar Saxena of Amroha and Prashant Gupta of Chandausi.

As per an official communiqué, the ATS was tipped-off about a gang which was operating different bank accounts opened with fake names and addresses and was using ill-gotten money in criminal activities.

The ATS developed the input and it surfaced that the accused persons got the money transferred to fake bank accounts from unknown sources and used cardless payment mode to withdraw the money.

It also came to light that the accused persons used SIMs acquired from different distributors/retailers. It also surfaced that the distributors/retailers misused the ID proofs and photos of different customers for obtaining SIM cards and activated them. They used to sell such pre-activated SIM cards for Rs 260 each in place of Rs 20, which is the cost of a SIM card.

The prime accused, Prem Singh, had sold 1,500 pre-activated SIM cards to different persons in New Delhi. These pre-activated SIM cards were used by the miscreants, including those of foreign countries also, and they used these SIM cards for opening online bank accounts and securing money transfer from unknown sources.

The sleuths said the accused arrested by Noida ATS unit would be brought to Lucknow while look-out notices would be issued against the miscreants of foreign origin.

The accused arrested will be produced in a court and will be taken on police custody remand for interrogation to find out the names of other members of the gang.