10 held for online bank fraud
Punjagutta police arrested 10 members of a gang, including a Nigerian, for swindling funds of victims by hacking into their bank accounts.
The gang had committed the fraud in Kolkata, Coimbatore, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Vizag and other places. The modus operandi of the gang was first to identify a potential victim with a fat bank account with an option of tele-banking and find out the phone number of the victim. Then they would block the SIM for a brief period. During the blocked time, they would send an SMS instructing the banker to transfer money from the account of the victim to another target account, and later withdraw the money.
Earlier on June 12, this paper reported about the incident of online fraud in which Anil Sikka, a CEO of a private company of Banjara Hills who banked with the SBI, Dwarakapuri Colony, had `5 lakh siphoned from his account to an ICICI account.
His phone was deactivated twice and only got activated once an unknown payee was added to his account. The second time it happened, money was transferred to a person named Kushal.
The 10-member gang was arrested on July 1. They confessed they were oper- ating under a Nigerian named Tony in Nigeria. His key agent in India was another Nigerian, Sunny, operating from Bengaluru and who in turn had agents working for him in Vizag, Kolkata, Mumbai.
Hyderabad police DCP West Zone, Stephen Ravindra said, the team systematically studied the call details and bank account particulars of Anil Sikka and found that he was subject to a phishing attack wherein his SIM was blocked and deactivated. The gang used to steal identity of people and make their own driving licences, voter ID cards and others and steal money from their banks using the identification.
Probe revealed that the gang got 25 to 30 duplicate SIM cards and siphoned off `1 to `1.5 crore.