UP: 5 held for selling SIM cards on fake IDs

Prayagraj (Uttar Pradesh), Oct 1 (IANS) Five members of a gang that sold SIM cards to cyber fraudsters and criminals, have been arrested by a joint team of Army Intelligence (Lucknow), Special Operations Group (Narcotics) and Kareli police.

The members were arrested on Thursday while selling SIMs to criminals near Lal Colony in the city.

The police have seized around 1,000 SIMs and forged documents from their possession.

The arrested persons have been identified as Abdul Khalid, Shriram Chaurasia, Zishan Ahmad, Vikas Kesarwani and Krishna Kumar.

Inspector (Kareli) Anupam Sharma said the arrested persons had sold SIM cards to law-breakers at high prices after creating fake IDs.

"The miscreants are experts in generating fake IDs with a mobile app and selling SIMs to cyber criminals and others. They sold at least two SIM cards on a single ID. After selling a SIM to a customer with his original ID and activating it, they used to call the same customer pretending that their ID, which they had submitted for SIM, had gone missing and sought another ID for activation of the SIM card," he said explaining their modus operandi.

The gang was also expert in generating fake IDs to sell SIM cards of a prominent cellular provider company. They were supplying fake activated SIMs to cyber criminals and a city-based call centre.