IMEI Tampering Unit Busted In Delhi In Major Success In Combating Cybercrime

An illegal mobile manufacturing and IMEI tampering unit has been busted in Delhi's Karol Bagh in a major success in combating cybercrime. Five men have been arrested, and 1,826 phones and laptops with IMEI tampering software were recovered during Operation Cyberhawk.

IMEI is a unique 15-digit serial number assigned to mobile phones that can be used to identify and track a specific device.

The accused allegedly tampered with this unique number to avoid detection of devices that were either stolen or meant for use in cyberfraud.

Besides finished and semi-finished smartphones and keypad models, the police also recovered specialized software, IMEI scanners, thousands of mobile body parts, and printed IMEI labels.

The Karol Bagh police station had been monitoring suspicious mobile phone activity in the Beadonpura area for the past 15 days. The police received continuous inputs that an illegal mobile phone assembly and IMEI tampering business was operating on the fourth floor of a building in the area.

After confirmation, the team was instructed to catch the accused red-handed and dismantle the unit. On November 20, the team raided Aditya Electronics & Accessories located on the fourth floor of a commercial building in Beadonpura.

During the raid, five people were found fitting old mobile phone motherboards into new body parts. IMEI-changing software was running on their laptops. The phones that were ready with new IMEIs were also being packaged there.

All five accused -- Ashok Kumar, Ramnarayan, Dharmendra Kumar, Deepanshu, and Deepak -- were arrested on the spot.

The accused claimed they bought old and damaged mobile motherboards and stolen phones at low prices from scrap dealers in and around Delhi. The new mobile bodies were imported from China through spare parts suppliers.

Then they used the IMEIs of the old phones to create a new handset that would not be available in the mobile manufacturing databases. This was done using software like WRITEIMEI 0.2.2 and WRITEIMEI 2.0.

The finished phones were then sold through various channels in Karol Bagh, Gaffar Market, and other popular mobile phone markets in Delhi-NCR. The unit was operating on a large scale, shipping hundreds of counterfeit phones every month.

The customers of such products were mostly criminals trying to avoid tracking.

The police are now investigating who sourced the spare parts from China and who were the end users of these products.