Cyber frauds siphon off ₹25 crore from Thane-based firm after hacking their financial portal

According to Thane Cyber Cell, who is investigating the case, the hackers breached the payment gateway of the company, changed its database, increased the wallet balances and with merchant credentials logged into the company’s portal and carried out transactions to different bank accounts

Thane: In one of the biggest cyber heists in the city, unknown hackers got access to the escrow bank account of a Thane-based company and siphoned off around ₹25 crore.

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An escrow account is a temporary pass-through account held by a third party during the process of a transaction between two parties.

According to Thane Cyber Cell, who is investigating the case, the hackers breached the payment gateway of the company, changed its database, increased the wallet balances and with merchant credentials logged into the company’s portal and carried out transactions to different bank accounts.

“The hackers got hold of the company’s escrow bank account in a well-known national bank and transferred around ₹25 crore to different unknown accounts,” a police source said.

According to Thane police officials, the incident happened on April 14 this year when employees of the company could not reconcile the debit and credit accounts.

“After a thorough scrutiny, the officials of the company came to know that their financial portal was hacked,” the police officer said. “Someone has hacked into the system of the company’s financial portal, exceeded the wallet balance of the company and using merchant keys, they have done several financial transactions on different unknown accounts.”

The fraudsters repeated the same modus operandi on April 21 and April 22, he added.

An officer from Shrinagar police station said, “The hackers have created four companies through which they have transferred the amount through the company’s escrow bank account to several unknown bank account holders. Some transactions were stopped after the matter was reported to the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI). However, other transactions were already completed by then.”