Cyber fraud held for cheating entertainment firm

The man was arrested on Tuesday evening for allegedly syphoning off ₹11 lakh from Soham Rockstar Entertainment by hacking the firm’s email account

Mumbai A man was arrested on Tuesday evening for allegedly syphoning off ₹11 lakh from Soham Rockstar Entertainment by hacking the firm’s email account.

The man identified as Abrar Abdul Ahmed, said to be an expert in “man-in-the-email” cyber attacks and a resident of Jamtara in Jharkhand, was arrested from Goregaon (Shutterstock)

The man identified as Abrar Abdul Ahmed, said to be an expert in “man-in-the-email” cyber attacks and a resident of Jamtara in Jharkhand, was arrested from Goregaon where he was trying to withdraw a syphoned amount from an ATM kiosk.

According to the Oshiwara police, the owner of the Shabir Ahmed Entertainment company, Dawood Sayyed (62), had approached Soham Rockstar on August 26 after the fraud sent him an email of an invoice to make the payment to the bank account mentioned, instead of the bank account that Soham Rockstar had initially shared with him.

Sayyed told the police that he had given two songs to Soham Rockstar to edit – a work worth ₹21 lakh. After editing the songs, the company sent their invoices to Sayyed through email. A few minutes later, Sayyed received another email, also from the company, asking him to transfer the amount to some other account.

“Sayyed said that he did not suspect any foul play, as entire communication related to the project had taken place through emails. The only catch was that the last email had come from an ID which had just one alphabet different from the e-mail ID of the firm,” said Manohar Dhanvade, senior police inspector of Oshiwara police station.

After transferring the cash, when Sayyed called the company’s accountant to verify the receipt of the amount, he was told that they had not received the money. On sending them the emails, Soham Rockstar accountant Mehul Shah confirmed that the email was not sent from their company.

Dhanvade said that after registering the complaint, they managed to get the bank account of the fraud to which the money had been transferred. After freezing the transaction, the police officers tracked 10-15 bank accounts to which the fraud could have transferred the money and also got the mobile phone number linked to the accounts.

“We then traced the location of the mobile and found the user near Hill Ozon Tower in Goregaon West. Police officers then laid a trap at the spot and saw the accused entering an ATM kiosk to withdraw cash and arrested 32-year-old Ahmed,” said Dhanvade.

On search, the police team found 25 debit cards of different banks, 19 passbooks, four mobile handsets and several PAN cards and Aadhar cards obtained in different names, Dhanvade added.

On investigation, the police found that the accused had SIM cards that he had acquired with the help of fake address documents. They also found that he was a member of the gang active in Jamtara and had come to Mumbai a few days ago. “The accused had committed the crime on his visit to Mumbai and was about to leave for Jharkhand with the cash,” said Dhanavade.