Signing you in

Taking advantage of the growing buzz around the Cockroach Janata Party, the scamsters are suspected of duping several youths by setting up fraudulent links.

The accused have been identified as Nadia resident Ayan Nandi and three men from Jharkhand, Allaudin Ansari (36), Abhisek Kumar Das (21) and Birendra Das (20).

“Since the Cockroach Janta Party is trending and youths are being attracted in large numbers, the accused opened a fraudulent link and asked people to join the ‘movement’. We suspect they committed fraud through the link, and a probe is on into that aspect,” said Suchismita Das, the assistant police commissioner, Cyber police station, Bhubaneswar.

Police sources said the accused were allegedly disguising APK (Android package kit) files in the link and using that to dupe people by hacking their phones and stealing money. APK files are notorious since they can be used by hackers to gain unauthorised access to a person’s phone, including sensitive information such as bank details and OTPs.

Some of the accused have previous criminal records, police said. One of the cases pertains to an investment fraud in which they duped a retired government official out of Rs 26 lakh. In another case, they managed to install an APK file disguised as a vehicle challan message into a person’s phone.

Police said one of the accused, Ayan Nandi, runs a technology firm that faces 14 complaints on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, including from Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh.

In another case, where they allegedly pocketed Rs 40 lakh, Abhishek Das managed to access people’s phones by getting them to install a mobile app.