Mobile phone forgery accused arrested

Suspects allegedly changed gadgets’ IMEI numbers

KURIANWALA:

Teams of the FIA’s Cyber Crime Wing arrested seven suspects on charges of changing the IMEI of unregistered mobile phones.

The circle in charge of FIA Cyber Crime Wing, Syed Arshad Ali Rizvi, had received information about some alleged criminals who had forged various stolen mobile phones and changed their IMEI numbers.

On the direction of circle in charge, Sub-Inspector Ghayyur Abbas Jafri raided a place in Sargodha and arrested Rizwan Haider, Omar Farooq, Aqib Shabbir, Javed Khan, Zeeshan Ghaffar, and Zain Ali.

A case was registered against them, and an investigation was underway.

Meanwhile, Sub-Inspector Tanveer Hussain raided a place in Lahore and registered a case against Muhammad Ahmad Raza, who was accused of blackmailing and harassing a woman by sending her offensive videos and pictures.

According to the FIA official, accused Ahmad Raza had allegedly captured some offensive pictures of the woman and threatened her with sending those pictures to her relatives if his demand was not met.

Last month the FIA Cyber Crime Wing had arrested several people in Lahore and allegedly seized materials of forgery and fraud from their possession.

The suspects had been accused of blackmailing people through creating fake accounts with feminine names on social media. A case had been registered against the accused under the provisions of the FIA Cyber Crimes Act.

Syed Arshad Ali Rizvi, in charge of the Faisalabad Circle of the FIA Cyber Crimes Wing, had received some information that some people had allegedly formed a gang that created fake IDs on the social media where they posted pictures of some beautiful girls and sent friendship requests to unsuspecting people.

The gang would later show inappropriate pictures of girls through video chats while texting their targets to seduce them to post their own naked pictures.

In the meanwhile, they made their objectionable videos and then blackmailed the people and extorted huge amount of money from them.

In case of non-payment, their objectionable pictures and videos were shared with their family members.

On the orders of circle in charge of the FIA Cyber Crimes Wing, Assistant Director Shoaib Riaz had traced the accused on technical grounds and arrested them in Lahore.

In a case last year, the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cyber Crime Wing had arrested a man in Rawalpindi for allegedly blackmailing his female friend into having an illicit relationship with him by threatening her with uploading inappropriate videos of her on the social media.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2022.