The cyber crime cell of Chandigarh Police has arrested five college dropouts, all hailing from Haryana, for stealing a financial firm’s ₹1.94 crore by hacking their mobile application and bypassing its payment gateway.
The accused have been identified as Pankaj Kumar, 29, from Sirsa; Vikram, 28, from Fatehabad; and Mukesh Kumar, 29, Rajender Parsad, alias Raju, 38, and Rohtash Kumar, 27, all from Hisar.
With their arrest, police also recovered four trucks, eight mobile phones, four laptops, 31 SIM cards and one modem.
The arrests came following a complaint by the managing director, accounts, at Paul Merchants Private Limited that they had been defrauded of ₹1.94 crore. The complainant said the firm was a non-banking financial corporation duly licensed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and was authorised to issue prepaid wallets and cards.
These prepaid wallets and cards are issued through the firm’s mobile application Paulpay V2.0, which is used by customers to make payments for various services, such as utility bills, mobile recharge, DTH recharge or FASTtags, etc.
On the complaint, a case was registered under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code at the cyber crime police station on December 31, 2022. During the course of investigation, police found that the money was fraudulently withdrawn through 1,497 IDs and 3,114 transactions on Paulpay V2.0 app.
{{/usCountry}}On the complaint, a case was registered under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code at the cyber crime police station on December 31, 2022. During the course of investigation, police found that the money was fraudulently withdrawn through 1,497 IDs and 3,114 transactions on Paulpay V2.0 app.
{{/usCountry}}Learnt hack through YouTube
According to police, Rohtash Kumar was the gang’s mastermind. “A science graduate, he used his technical knowledge to hunt for bugs in financial mobile apps and chanced upon Paulpay V2.0. Using the Burpsuite tool, he intercepted data of Paulpay’s website and managed to bypass the payment gateway to steal the firm’s money,” said superintendent of police (cyber), Ketan Bansal.
“Kumar learnt the method of bypassing payment gateway through YouTube and taught the other accused, Rajender and Mukesh, online. Then with the help of other accused, they prepared IDs on Paulpay app and stole ₹1.94 crore in nine days,” the official added.
Pankaj was the first to be arrested and some SIM cards that were used to create the Paulpay IDs were recovered from his possession. During interrogation, he disclosed that his friend Vikram, who runs a cafe at Tulsi Chowk, Fatehabad, Haryana, approached him that he and his friends Kamaldeep, Rajender Parsad, Mukesh and Rohtash Beniwal were working together and they needed Paulpay IDs. Vikram asked him to provide the IDs for ₹1,500 per ID. On his disclosure, the other accused were arrested.
Paid off truck loans, insurance premiums
Investigations pointed out that accused Mukesh, Rajender and his brother Kamaldeep, who is yet to be arrested, were plying 17 trucks. Using the stolen money, the accused paid ₹30 lakh towards repayment of loans against these trucks.
They spent another ₹5 lakh on recharging FASTags of several vehicles, ₹2 lakh on mobile phone recharges, ₹2.5 lakh on premiums of insurance policies, ₹25 lakh on Amazon gift cards , ₹10 lakh on Flipkart coupons and transferred another ₹50 lakh to Paytm accounts.