India’s Pune City Cyber Cell unit arrested several “fake website creators” known to be in possession of 40,000 domain names.
In the document released by the police, there are references to “Hannu International Corp. Pvt. Ltd.” and “DomainKing.ng” – the latter as a pluralized typo.
The fraudsters appear to have abused the name of the company involved in the debacle and subsequent UDRP against the domain DomainKing.biz, brought forth by Rick Schwartz.
From an initial assessment of the the Marathi language document, it contains information about how the company Hannu International Corp. Pvt. Ltd. was formed in India with a fake ID, receiving a domain registrar license.
According to the Pune City police, the company registered more than 40,000 domains and used them to conduct digital fraud, mail scam, insurance fraud etc.
We will update this post with further information as it becomes available. Many thanks to Vinay for the tip and Kamal for the initial translations.
Update: Some more information (link is very slow) states the following:
Pune: Officials of the Cyber Crime Cell (CCC) of the city police Crime Branch arrested two persons, Hargurunaz Karimsing Vijaysing (20) and Parabhnaj Karamsing Vijaysing (25), from Jalandhar, Punjab, involved in several cyber crime incidents.
As per officials, the accused created fake domain names to execute email spoofing, insurance frauds, job frauds, lottery frauds, seed fraud and multi-level marketing frauds.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Deepak Sakore said that the CCC had received a complaint from one Ajaykumar Thakur, who was cheated of $7,000. “Thakur would often communicate with ‘harvey@camry.com’, but in March 2016, he received a mail from ‘harvey@camrry.com’ and accordingly he transferred money without seeing the mail id properly. Later in October, he found that his payment to his business partner is due. When he verified the details, he found that he has been cheated,” said Sakore.
“In our investigation, we found that the accused has till now created 40 thousand fake domains and would operate the business 24×7,” he added.
Update: Another source, Pune Crime Patrol, cites the following information in an article:
Copyright © 2024 DomainGang.com · All Rights Reserved.Feb 17 (PCP NEWS) : Ignoring one alphabet in mail id resulted a loss of seven thousand U S Dollars, said DCP Cyber Deepak Sakore here this evening, after his team busted a 40 thousand Domain Hacker Racket.
Sakore, while speaking with PCP News Correspondent further said that, one complaint was registered to Cyber Cell Senior Police Inspector Sunil Pawar, by E G Kantawala Pvt Ltd, Mundhwa, about 7000/- U S Dollars were fraudulently transferred to an account having similar Mail ID, for further detection Police Inspector Radhika Phadke went to Punjab, in which he and her team succeeded to nab two highly educated brothers, identified as Hargurunaz Karimsing Vijaysing of 20 and Parabhnaj Karamsing Vijaysing of 25 from Jullander, who were operating through their Call center, as per the complainant he was Importing spares of Weighing Scale from China Base Zongshan Camera Electronics Pvt Ltd, having their mail ID as harvey@camry.com, they received a mail for depositing 7000 U S Dollars, 10 percent amount of the order placed by them for the spares of 72672 U S Dollars, the amount was deposited to the account as mentioned in the mail, a another mail was send to the complainant by this hacker, for depositing more 30 percent amount, which raised some questions in the mind of victim, so he immediately checked the previous mail, where he noticed that the mail which he received was from harvey@camrry.com, one alphabet “R” was excess in that mail, he came to know that he was cheated, so he filed complaint to our cyber cell, said Sakore.
Sakore, while speaking about the modes of the accused, said that, both the brothers are master in cyber frauds, they have registered a fake Domain company in the name of Ideabiz since 2008, from the reputed Domain Company PDR, but the IP Address for this company was mentioned as Nigeria, besides this another company www.domainkings.ng was also doing frauds in the name of Hanu International Corporation Pvt Ltd, which is hold by these accused, by which they had registered around 40 thousand domains from where they were cheating peoples throughout the world, for accepting money they were using www.perfectmoney.com and www.wtransfer.com which is a Hongkong base ballot, with the help of cyber infrastructure they were cheating citizens by various frauds, as Mail Snooping, Insurance , Jobs, Lottery, Tours and Travels, Seeds, Online Business and Multilevel Marketing Fraud.
Joint Police Commissioner Sunil Ramanand also appealed the citizens to take care while answering such types of mails, in which citizens may become victim, this is a quite good example that, ignoring only one alphabet had resulted in heavy loss to the complainant, the detection is also appreciable as our officers and constables have done a wonderful job, and this detection will help many Police agencies around the world to nab others who are involved in such practice. Citizens may contact our cyber cell for their complaints which may result in various detection’s by these culprits.
Sunil Pawar and Radhika Phadke also added that, around 391 applications from citizens, for similar frauds are received till date, we had freeze one account of these accused in which around 24 lakh rupees is balance, in further investigation the fraud amount might increase in thousand of crore rupees.
Now, this is the type of news I like to read! Cyber criminals in the domain industry being arrested and prosecuted. I think it’s important that as many people as possible read articles like this so that they finally start to understand that it’s a serious crime to commit fraud online. The more people see arrests being made and prison sentences issued, the more it may detour them from committing such crimes.
This is outright fake news,just think the complainaint was claiming to be in constant contact with a harvey@camry.com,camry.com redirects to toyota website,and toyota is car manufacturer not weighing scale manufacturer.the guy who says he got duped is either plain stupid or is lying,someone buying parts from his dealer anywhere in the world would obviously know what his dealer website is and may have opened it atleast once before deciding on the product.There is obviously something fishy about this report. i call it fake.
Rajeev – Are you calling out the Pune Police to be liars? https://twitter.com/PuneCityPolice/status/827915386754564097