SRINAGAR: In the Kashmir division of the UT, cases of cybercrime and online fraud have been surging with great intensity, causing distress to not only individuals but also organizations and sectors.
In a shocking incident, 11 tourists from Gujarat were apprehended in Gulmarg, the globally acclaimed ski resort located in North Kashmir, as they attempted to sneak through the cableway Gondola using counterfeit and altered tickets.
The authorities were previously stunned when they caught 28 tourists from Mumbai in April, who were found with bogus Gondola tickets in Gulmarg. It was later revealed that these tourists were provided with fake tickets by their tour operator in Mumbai.
In an official statement, a spokesperson of Jammu and Kashmir Cable Car Corporation (JKCCC) said that the ticket scanning team of Gulmarg Gondola Project caught a group of 28 passengers from Mumbai at the scanning point of Gulmarg Gondola station. “These passengers were carrying edited fake tickets through their tour Manager Makrand Anand Ghanekar S/o Anand Ghanekar of Mumbai,” reads the statement.
Miscreants sell fake Gondola tickets aiming to ruin the reputation of the tourist site, affecting citizens involved in Gulmarg tourism. Locals now want the ticketing system converted back to offline mode to limit illegal sales.
President Guide Association Gulmarg, Manzoor Lone, said that online tickets affected 80 percent of the livelihood of tourist guides in Gulmarg. Lone said that online ticketing has hampered their ability to support themselves. People working as tourist guides in Gulmarg and at ticket counters, who were accommodated by offline ticketing, are now facing the consequences.
“Earlier we used to have 30% of the quota, but when the system was switched to online mode, the quotas were removed, which resulted in many problems,” he claimed, “that when the system was converted to online one, we were not taken into account.”
Presently, there are 918 people who are all enrolled members of the Gulmarg Guide Association. “As of now, offline ticketing is also happening, although Gulmarg officials have been referring to it as VIP quota. There are 400 offline ticket reservations. Due to their inability to cope up with the situation and make a living out of it, some guides have been compelled to engage in black marketing of tickets, though we are against them and don’t support such acts,” stated Lone.
Manzoor claimed that though this issue has been discussed with the higher authorities of the J&K UT, no action was taken.
A tourist guide, on grounds of anonymity, said, “I and many other guides like me, we are facing the brunt of the online ticketing system, and we want the government to look into this matter as soon as possible.”
Despite multiple calls, Ghulam Jeelani Zargar, CEO of the Gulmarg Development Authority and Managing Director of the JK Cable Car Corporation, did not respond.
Online Fraud: Man Loses Rs 1.3 Crore While Trying to Earn Money by Liking YouTube Clips
People are losing millions of rupees after trusting strangers and making internet payments. Various scams have been reported in recent months, despite officials warning people to be cautious before making any kind of online payment.
In another case, a Mumbai resident was reportedly tricked out of Rs 1.3 crore by fraudsters who claimed to pay for liking YouTube videos. The fraudsters allegedly promised the victim Rs 5,000 to 7,000 every day. The victim, who is 47 years old, works for a marketing firm.
According to media reports, the cyber frauds enticed the victim by offering large payments for viewing and like YouTube videos, and persuaded her to deposit money into 25 different bank accounts between January and March of this year.
A cop who is probing the matter said that the complainant had got a WhatsApp message asking him if he was interested in a part time job that could earn him between Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 per day. During the conversation, the message sender explained that he would send YouTube videos, and his job would be to watch, like, and screenshot them before sending them to the same WhatsApp number.
The victim was asked to pay Rs 5,000 as registration and other fees. He then received a link of a YouTube video and followed instructions. He also received Rs 10,000 in his account. The victim was then requested to join a Telegram channel, and the accused promised him that he would be assigned various jobs that would earn him a large sum of money. The complaint was persuaded and joined the Telegram group.
Also Read Indian Man Travels To Pakistan To Marry Love Of His Life
“He was asked to put money down as an investment and was given various tasks to complete. The accused told him he’d make a lot of money once he finished the tasks,” the police stated.
It was only when that the complainant demanded return of his invested money and profit he got to know that he has been duped. The fraudster claimed that he had not done his job properly and demanded more money. This is when the complainant lodged an FIR.
Cops said that the complainant had sent money in 25 different bank accounts. The accounts were opened in the name of fake companies. Further investigation into the incident is underway.
(Agencies)
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Lucknow: Two FIRs have been lodged for irregularities in an army recruitment drive that was conducted specially for civilians for the posts of cooks, washermen, and other helping staff in March.
Some candidates used solvers while taking the written exam and this use of unfair means got exposed during scrutiny.
Lt Colonel of Army Medicine Core headquarters, P.K. Singh lodged a case against a miscreant for taking an exam at the place of another candidate.
The officials entrusted with the job to conduct examinations checked the academic credentials of an examinee named Rohan Singh of Agra who had applied for the post of washerman.
“The photos pasted on the original form of this examinee did not match with the one clicked during the written exam. When he was summoned for presenting his academic credentials, the suspect claimed the photo was not his. This needed a police probe, so a case had to be registered,” an officer said.
Another youth was accused of being helped by another person to clear his written exam for the post of cook at AMC.
It was alleged that Deepu of Agra appeared for the exam held on March 12 and March 15 in place of Hemant of Mathura.
When the U.S. president on Tuesday announced that he would seek reelection in 2024, attention quickly turned to his advanced age.
If elected, Joe Biden would be 82 on inauguration day in 2025, and 86 on leaving the White House in January 2029.
POLITICO took a look around the globe and back through history to meet some other elected world leaders who continued well into their octogenarian years, at a time when most people have settled for their dressing gown and slippers, some light gardening, and complaining about young people.
Here are seven of the oldest — and yes, they’re all men.
Paul Biya
President of Cameroon Paul Biya | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The world’s oldest serving leader, Cameroon’s president has been in power since 1982, winning his (latest) reelection at the age of 85 with a North Korea-esque 71.28 percent of the vote.
Spanning more than four decades and seven consecutive terms — in 2008, a constitutional reform lifted term limits — Biya’s largely undisputed reign has not come without controversy.
His opponents have regularly accused him of election fraud, claiming he successfully built a state apparatus designed to keep him in power.
Notorious for his lavish trips to a plush palace on the banks of Lake Geneva, which he’s visited more than 50 times, Biya keeps stretching the limits of retirement. Although he has not formally announced a bid for the next presidential elections in 2025, his party has called on him to run again in spite of his declining health.
Last February, celebrations were organized throughout the country for the president’s 90th birthday. According to the government, young people spontaneously came out on the streets to show their love for Biya.
Konrad Adenauer
Former Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer | Keystone/Getty Images
West Germany’s iconic first chancellor was elected for his inaugural term at the tender age of 73, but competed and won a third and final term at the age of 85.
In his 14-year chancellorship (1949-1963), Adenauer shaped Germany’s postwar years with a strong focus on integrating the young democracy into the West. Big milestones such as the integration of Germany into the European Economic Community and joining the NATO alliance just a few years after World War II happened under his leadership.
If his nickname “der Alte” (“the old man”) is one day bestowed upon Biden, the U.S. president would share it with a true friend of America.
Ali Khamenei
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei | AFP via Getty Images
84-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last word on all strategic issues in Iran, and his rule has been marked by murderous brutality against opponents.
That violence has only escalated in recent years, with mass arrests and the imposition of the death penalty against those protesting his dictatorial rule. A mere middle-ranking cleric in the 1980s, few expected Khamenei to succeed Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran’s supreme leader, and he took the top job in hurried, constitutionally dubious circumstances in 1989.
A pipe-smoker and player of the tar, a traditional stringed instrument, he was president during the attritional Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and survived a bomb attack against him in 1981 that crippled his arm.
Thankfully for Khamenei, he doesn’t have the stress of facing elections to wear him down.
Robert Mugabe
President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe | Michael Nagle/Getty Images
You’ve heard the saying “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely” — well, here’s a classic case study.
Robert Mugabe’s political career reached soaring heights before crashing to depressing lows, during his nearly four decades ruling over Zimbabwe. He came to power as a champion of the anti-colonial struggle, but his rule descended into authoritarianism — while he oversaw the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy and society.
Though Mugabe’s final election win was marred by allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation, the longtime leader chalked up a thumping, landslide victory in 2013, aged 89.
He was finally, permanently, removed as leader well into his nineties, during a coup d’etat in 2017. He died two years later.
Giorgio Napolitano
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano | Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images
The former Italian president took his largely symbolic role to new heights when, aged 86, he successfully steered the country through a perilous transition of power in 2011 — closing that particular chapter of Silvio Berlusconi’s story.
Operating mostly behind the scenes, Napolitano saw five PMs come and go during his eight-and-a-half years in office, at a time when Italian politics were rife with instability (but hey, what’s new?).
Reelected against his will in 2013 at 87 — he had wanted to step down, but gave in after a visit from party leaders desperate to put Italy’s political landscape back on an even keel — Napolitano won the nickname “Re Giorgio” (King George) for his statesmanship.
When he resigned two years later, he said: “Here [in the presidential palace], it’s all very beautiful, but it’s a bit like jail. At home, I’ll be ok, I can go out for a walk.”
Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
“It has been a very good day,” Javier Solana, the then European Union foreign policy chief, exclaimed when Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in 2005.
As a tireless advocate of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Abbas has enjoyed strong backing from the international community.
But three EU policy chiefs later and with lasting peace no closer, Abbas is still in power, despite most polls showing that Palestinians want him to step aside.
His solution for political survival: No presidential elections have been held in the Palestinian Territories since that historic ballot in 2005, with the Palestinian leadership blaming either Israel or the prospect of rising Hamas influence for the postponement of elections.
While Abbas seems to have found a solution for political survival, the physical survival of the 87-year-old chain smoker is now being called into question.
William Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone | Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Queen Victoria reportedly described Gladstone as a “half-mad firebrand” — and you’d have to be to chase a fourth term as prime minister aged 82.
At that point Gladstone had already outlived Britain’s life expectancy at the time by decades.
During his career, Gladstone expanded the vote for men — but failed to pass a system of home rule in Ireland, and he was slammed for alleged inaction to help British soldiers who were slaughtered in the Siege of Khartoum.
Gladstone was Britain’s oldest-ever prime minister when he eventually stepped down at 84 — and no one has beaten that record since. Similarly, no one has served more than his four (nonconsecutive) terms.
But should the Tories remain addicted to chaos, who’d bet against Boris Johnson starting his fifth stint as PM in 2049?
Ali Walker and Christian Oliver contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Gurugram: The Gurugram Police has arrested an accused in Rs 1 crore cyber fraud case from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh who had transferred money from a company in a fake bank account after hacking into the e-mail ID.
The police have recovered a mobile phone and 2 SIM cards from his possession and also frozen the fake account of the accused.
According to the police, on March 27 a complaint was received at cyber crime, east police station and the complainant alleged that a person hacked into the e-mail ID of his company and transferred Rs 87,17,714 by his company employee to an account with Kotak Mahindra Bank in the name of investment.
An FIR was registered and the probe was initiated.
A team led by Cyber police station head inspector Jasveer finally nabbed the accused, identified as Manohar Appam, from Visakhapatnam.
“The accused got the money transferred in a fake bank account after hacking into the e-mail ID but now he is in police custody. We will take him on remand after produced him before a city court on Friday,” said Priyanshu Dewan, ACP, Cyber.
New Delhi: Five men were arrested from Jamtara in Jharkhand for allegedly duping more than 2,500 people by posing as customer care executives of banks and e-commerce websites, the Delhi Police said on Wednesday.
A sim cards supplier was also arrested from Murshidabad in West Bengal, they said.
The accused posted their mobile phone numbers as the customer care helplines of banks and e-commerce sites on the internet. Once they got the access to a victim’s number registered with a bank, they would siphon off money from his/her account, police said.
Nijamudin Ansari (23), Afroj Alam (23), Mohammad Amir Ansari (22), Sarfaraj Ansari (22) and Afroj Ansari (22) were arrested from Jamtara while Nasim Malitya (31) was nabbed from Murshidabad, they said.
A total of 12,500 pre-activated sim cards were provided to the fraudsters in Jamtara in one year by Malitya, police said, adding that more than 21,000 sim cards were recovered from Malitya.
According to police, a complainant, presently residing in Dubai, had come to Delhi to visit his daughter.
He wanted to get the bank passbook of her daughter updated and searched for the customer care number on the internet. When he called on the number, the person on the other end, posing as the customer care executive, asked him to download ‘anydesk’ application on his phone for further assistance, a senior police officer said.
The fraudster then asked him to log into his net banking account following which, they made two unauthorised transactions of Rs 9.5 lakh and Rs 50,000, police said.
During the investigation, police found that the fraudsters used the call forwarding method and changed the webpage customer phone numbers frequently in order to hide their locations.
On April 11, a raid was conducted at Jamtara in Jharkhand along with a team of Jharkhand Police and the accused were nabbed while they were making calls from an isolated place in Nawadih village, Karmatar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (outer north) Ravi Kumar Singh said.
It was revealed that sim cards were supplied after activation from Murshidabad and in a single phone, more than 300 SIMs were activated in a day, the DCP said.
One fraudster used to keep three to four smartphones for calling at a time and choose a remote place in village Nawadih, Karmatar in Jamtara, police said.
Nijamudin Ansari was previously involved in a cyber case of Jamatara and remained in jail for four months. He is one of the masterminds of this case. He used to pose as a senior bank manager, police added.
Police said so far, close to Rs 20 lakh that was siphoned off by the accused has been tracked and a refund process initiated.
Gurugram: A 61-year-old woman here was allegedly duped of Rs 2 crore on the pretext of customs clearance by a man she came in contact with on social media, police said.
The woman in her complaint alleged that in December 2022 she received a “follow request” from a person who introduced himself as a British Airways pilot, the police said.
“On December 5, he said he had a surprise package with gift items like i-phone, artificial jewellery, watch, accessories and cash and asked for my address and phone number,” she said in her complaint.
The fraudster said that he would send the package to the woman if she paid him Rs 35,000. After she paid the money, she received a call from another person posing as an airport authority official and was asked to pay a penalty of Rs 1 lakh, police said.
On the fraudster’s assurance of getting the penalty money back, she transferred Rs 95,000 and sometime later he again called the woman and asked me to pay another Rs 2 lakh for a certificate required for doing currency exchange from USD to INR and she again got cheated, they said
The fraudsters did not stop there, on December 9 she received an SMS from another number claiming to be from United Nations Anti-Terrorist Department’, saying that she had to get a clearance form for the package, for which she had to pay.
“I was forced to take a loan against all my jewellery with Muthoot Finance and scammers forced me to transfer that loan amount as well,” the woman said.
She transferred Rs 35 lakh from her account and also sold a plot to arrange for Rs 50 lakh more. She also borrowed Rs 24.5 lakh from her relatives, police said.
“I was asked then for more money so I withdrew money from my joint bank account with my son and when my son was alerted of the withdrawal, he called me to inquire. After that it was revealed that the whole story was a scam and the scammer duped me of almost Rs 2 crore,” the complainant said.
An FIR was registered against unidentified fraudsters under sections 419 (cheating by impersonation) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and section 66-D of the IT Act at the cyber crime police station, Manesar on Monday and a probe is underway, said Naresh Kumar, the investigating officer.
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday said it has attached 20 immovable properties worth Rs 7.07 crore in the form of land of the Anee group of companies — Anee Bullion Industries Pvt Ltd, Anee Commodity Brokers Pvt Ltd. and Anee Securities Pvt. Ltd. and its promoter, director Ajit Kumar Gupta — situated at Lucknow, Amethi and Delhi.
The ED said that a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act was initiated in 2019 on the basis of various FIRs and complaints registered by the UP police against Ajit Kumar Gupta and various other persons and private firms for cheating and fraud to the tune of Rs 110 crore.
They lured the public to invest in various fraudulent schemes with the intention to defraud them of their invested amounts.
“Anee Bullion Industries Pvt Ltd, Ajit Kumar Gupta and others dishonestly and fraudulently acquired money from public in the guise of Daily Deposit Scheme, Monthly Recurring Scheme, Fixed Scheme, etc by offering high returns varying from 20% to 40 % on these schemes. Investors’ money, thus collected, was layered and rotated through the platform of various companies of the ‘Anee Group’ and was used for purchase various immovable properties in the name of Ajit Gupta and others,” the official said.
Hyderabad: City police have arrested a Nigerian national in a case of online gift fraud in which he, along with four other accused, cheated a person to the tune of Rs 1.22 crore.
The team of Cyber Crimes Police Station nabbed Onuigbo Chibuzo Godwin alias Bobby, 42, in New Delhi.
According to police, he was maintaining fake bank accounts, and SMS alert mobile numbers and used to give information to prime accused persons Sequro and Okwuchukwu who are residing in Nigeria regarding fraudulent transactions in those fake accounts.
The accused were cheating innocent people on the pretext of gift fraud. Bobby used to receive 20 percent on credited amounts towards his share.
Bakayoko Lassina, a national of Ivory Coast (West Africa), and Shoma Purkayastha alias Shoma Prasad Purkayastha of Meghalaya were arrested in February 2023 in the same case. The Nigerian mastermind Bobby has now been arrested. Police seized laptops, mobile phones, SIM cards, bank passbooks, and debit cards from his possession.
Police said Sequro and Okwuchukwu based in Nigeria are absconding.
According to police, the accused used to create fake Facebook profiles impersonating US/UK nationals and sending friend requests to Indians of the opposite sex. Later after becoming friends, they used to chat over WhatsApp. After a few days of chatting, they would become very close friends.
After gaining some confidence they inform the victims that they are going to send costly gifts, jewelry etc and later used to contact the victims with fake mobile numbers posing as if they were from the Customs Department and used to collect money in the name of RBI charges, customs, GST and other charges. They convinced the victims to deposit amounts in given fake bank accounts.
BERLIN — Germany’s center-right opposition wants to raise the heat on Chancellor Olaf Scholz by launching a parliamentary investigation into his alleged connection to a massive tax evasion scandal.
The case — which dates back over five years to the time when Scholz was still mayor of the Hamburg city-state — is linked to the broader so-called “Cum Ex” affair, under which the German state was defrauded by over €30 billion as some banks, companies, or individuals claimed tax reimbursements from authorities for alleged costs that never occurred.
The scandal already hung over the Social Democratic politician’s election campaign in 2021 but had little impact in the end as Scholz’s potential involvement remained unclear. Now it is heating up again after new details emerged that put his previous defense in question.
The Hamburg regional parliament plans to summon Scholz this spring — which will be for the third time — to an investigative committee looking into the scandal. And now the center-right CDU/CSU bloc also wants to set up an inquiry at the national level in the Bundestag.
“We will request a parliamentary committee of inquiry into the Scholz-Warburg tax affair in the German Bundestag in the first parliamentary week after the Easter vacations,” said the CDU’s Mathias Middelberg, deputy parliamentary group chairman, on Tuesday.
A government spokesperson said that “as a matter of principle,” Berlin does not comment on decisions announced by Bundestag members “out of respect for the constitutional body,” according to media reports.
Katja Mast, the Social Democrats’ chief whip, said the CDU/CSU is not following any interest in knowledge, but rather party tactical interests. “They bring up allegations that have long been refuted,” she said, adding that the committee in Hamburg had clarified all questions.
The CDU/CSU group has enough votes in parliament to be able to set up an investigative committee. The Left party also said it would back such a request. Parliamentary investigative committees can hear witnesses and experts and request access to documents. Although the findings are summarized in a non-binding report, the political consequences, such as for upcoming elections, could be significant.
In a letter to the CDU/CSU parliamentary group seen by POLITICO, chairmen Friedrich Merz and Alexander Dobrindt said that the case should be investigated due to its “significant” importance for German national politics.
Scholz has come under scrutiny because of his links to one Hamburg-based bank involved in the tax evasion scheme: During his time as mayor, he met on three separate occasions in private with one of the owners of the M.M. Warburg & Co. bank, which was already under investigation at the time by the Hamburg tax office. Officials were planning to reclaim €47 million, which they believed were ill-gotten gains in connection with the fraud.
However, in the end, the finance authority let the statute of limitations on the payment demand expire — and years later, after details of Scholz’s meetings with the banker emerged, critics began questioning whether the top Social Democrat might have intervened in favor of the bank.
Although the chancellor has constantly denied having intervened, he has also given no answer on what was discussed during the private meetings. Instead, Scholz said on several occasions during the past two-and-a-half years that he cannot remember the content of the discussions.
During his time as mayor of the Hamburg city-state, Scholz met with one of the owners of the M.M. Warburg & Co. Bank, involved in a tax evasion scheme | Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images
That defense is now being called into question as details emerged of a previous and longtime confidential Bundestag committee hearing with Scholz in July 2020, in which he appeared to easily remember details of his meetings with the banker. His critics argue that Scholz only started to claim having no memory of the meetings when their political and possibly criminal explosiveness became clear.
“This comprehensive memory gap of the chancellor after an initial memory of a concrete meeting … raises a multitude of questions to be clarified,” the letter from the CDU/CSU states.
Scholz and his allies have repeatedly rejected such criticism as politically motivated and stressed that past investigations found no wrongdoing. Scholz also highlighted that in the end, the bank did repay the €47 million, albeit only after it was ordered to do so by a court. The Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office said in March that it does not see any initial suspicion against the chancellor in the affair.
That hasn’t discouraged the opposition from planning to dig deeper, though.
“The chancellor would like to see … a line drawn under the clarification of this tax affair. But it is precisely the task of parliament to control the government, to look closely, especially with so many unanswered questions,” said CDU lawmaker Matthias Hauer.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
