Three Nigerians residing in India have been arrested by the for alleged cybercrime in Mumbai, India’s largest city. According to a report published by The Times of India on Thursday, the Nigerians and four others were arrested for hacking into over 2,000 bank accounts.
The suspects are Idrish D’Costa, Sinedu Christopher, Ifaain Odhu (all Nigerians); Irfan A Dehmukh, Tabiz Deshmukh, Rajesh Gaikwad, and Nizamuddin Shaikh. According to the report, they committed the crime on June 22.
It said the investigation kicked off after a city-based doctor, Tejas Shah, complained that that over Rs 2 lakh were transferred from his account. The Indian assistant commissioner of police, J M Yadav, said, the accused were arrested on Saturday by the Ahmedabad city police department for hacking into over 2,000 bank accounts and transferring crores of rupees after creating a fake webpage of the Income Tax Department.
According to him, they lured victims across the country by promising income tax (IT) refunds. For the first time, arrests have been made in these cases, the local cyber crime cell claimed. Mr Yadav added that there were at least 57 unsolved cases of such frauds in the country. The police boss further said the seven accused allegedly targeted 4,727 people across India, of which over 2,500 were duped of crores of rupees.
He added that the stolen monies were converted into bitcoins. “They first sent a web link to the victim through SMS, promising to get IT to refund. When the victim clicked the link he was directed to a `phishing’ page (a fake webpage) resembling the webpage of the IT Department.
“After the victim filled in the name of his bank, he was directed to a fake webpage of the bank where he was asked to fill in all the details of his bank account, “The victim was then sent a link of a mobile app as the last stage of getting a refund, which, when downloaded, enabled the fraudsters to hack into the victim’s mobile phone,
”Which was then used to obtain the password for net banking. Then the money was transferred from his account to a dummy account,” the ACP said. Premium Times
