3 outsourced staff blackmail, steal credit card info of IAS officer, arrested

The three men, employed as data analysts at a private firm, had also demanded ransom in bitcoins from the IAS officer, Anurag Srivastava, police said

Lucknow police’s cyber cell has arrested three outsourced employees of Gramin Jalapurti, a government department, for allegedly blackmailing, stealing credit card information and hacking into an email account of the principal secretary of the same department.

According to the cyber police, the IP addresses of computers used by the trio were traced, which led to their arrest.

The three men, employed as data analysts at a private firm, had also demanded ransom in bitcoins from the IAS officer, Anurag Srivastava, in charge of the Lucknow police cyber cell Mohammad Muslim Khan said. The accused were identified as Amit Pratap Singh, Hardik Khanna and Rajnish Nigam, all from Lucknow.

The trio, who have a master’s degree in computer application (MCA), had made a transaction worth ₹49,999 from Srivastava’s credit card. After hacking into the IAS officer’s Gmail account, the hackers gained access to data, which included some photographs, saved in his cloud account.

The photos were morphed and used to blackmail Srivastava for a ransom of five bitcoins.

According to the cyber police, the IP addresses of computers used by the trio were traced, which led to their arrest.