PUNE:
The
Pune cybercrime police have recovered nearly Rs14 crore, which was transferred
to a Hong Kong bank as a part of the Rs 94-crore Cosmos Bank online heist
last August. The account was frozen by the bank. The police team, headed by
senior inspector Jayram Paygude, repeatedly followed up the matter with the
bank officials in Hong Kong.
Police said the fraudsters had siphoned off Rs13.92
crore to an account with the Hong Kong-based bank. “The money will soon be
transferred to Cosmos Bank after the necessary paperwork is completed,” Paygude
said. Pune-based Cosmos Bank, which ranks among the city’s oldest urban
cooperative banks, was targeted by the hackers between August 11 and 13 last
year.
The hackers infiltrated the bank’s online systems
and siphoned off Rs 94.42 crore in two days. The suspects had used a malware to
hack into the bank’s server and created a parallel virtual server containing
the details of the bank. The virtual server then approved fraudulent
transactions. According to an investigation following the online heist, 12,000
unauthorized transactions, worth Rs 78 crore, took place using the VISA
facility of the bank. The money was mainly transferred to bank accounts located
outside India. Also, 2,849 illegal transactions, worth Rs 2.5 crore, took place
within India via the Rupay facility of the bank.
The money was withdrawn by the fraudsters’ agents
based in 21 countries. This was accomplished using debit cards programmed with
details of Cosmos Bank accounts. In all, 14,849 suspicious transactions took
place, involving a total sum of Rs80.50 crore. Another investigation revealed that
the suspects had executed three suspicious transactions using the SWIFT
(Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) facility.
Through these three transactions, Rs13.92 crores was transferred from Cosmos to the bank account of a trading company having its office in Hong Kong. Police later ascertained that the trading company had downed its shutters a long time ago, and that the fraudsters were misused by the suspects. In past year, the cybercrime police have arrested 15 people, mainly from Mumbai, Thane and Bhiwandi. Police have also seized a skimming machine, which was used to make duplicate debit cards with details of Cosmos Bank customers.
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