Foreigner held for fraudulently diverting ₹5.43cr from Bank of Baharain and Kuwait

According to the complaint filed by the Bank of Baharain and Kuwait, the money was fraudulently transferred from accounts of its three customers to multiple other bank accounts

Mumbai The south region cyber police have arrested a 29-year-old Nigerian national who is an alleged key member of a gang that hacked into the computer system of the Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait and fraudulently withdrew an amount of ₹5.43 crore from three bank accounts.

The accused, Michael Chibuzi Okonko, was arrested from Delhi on October 31 and brought to Mumbai following a complaint by the Dev Narayan, senior vice-president of the Bank of Baharain and Kuwait’s Mumbai branch. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The accused, Michael Chibuzi Okonko, was arrested from Delhi on October 31 and brought to Mumbai following a complaint by Dev Narayan, senior vice-president of the bank’s Mumbai branch. According to the complaint, the bank stated that in August, it had detected unlawful transactions worth ₹5.43 crore from its customer accounts. The money was fraudulently transferred from the accounts of its three customers to multiple other bank accounts.

Accordingly, a case was registered under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act, 2000, by the south region cyber police. Acting swiftly, the police froze ₹86 lakh, but the remaining amount was already withdrawn by the fraudsters.

“On going through the details of the beneficiary bank’s account holders, investigators learnt that the amount was fraudulently diverted and credited to bank accounts of people in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Assam,” said a police officer.

In Assam, the beneficiary account belonged to a woman who told the police that a person who befriended her on social media in February asked her to open the account.

“The person claimed to be a doctor and told her that he wished to open a clinic in Delhi. But for opening the clinic and transferring the money he needed a bank account first. Hence, he requested her to open a bank account and link his newly procured mobile number to it and send the SIM card his address. The woman followed his instructions and opened a bank account, which was later used to transfer amount of ₹6.12 lakh of the defrauded amount,” said the officer.

The cyber police identified the ATM kiosk in Delhi from where the fraud money was withdrawn. Okonko was caught on CCTV camera at the kiosk while withdrawing money.

The police seized 11 mobiles phones, two hard disks, three laptops and a SIM card from him. Preliminary investigation has revealed that the accused allegedly committed the offence with the help of his friend.

In Madhya Pradesh, an unemployed teacher was made to open a bank account for a commission of ₹10,000. Later the fraud money was diverted into his account and withdrawn by the fraudsters, said the police officer.