Two arrested for stealing ₹1 crore from Noida firm after phishing mail
To conceal their identities from one another on chat groups, the suspects used names based on characters from the web series Money Heist
Two people were arrested by the Cybercrime police station in Noida on Sunday for defrauding a Noida-based export firm of ₹1 crore, said police officers.
The complaint in this case was registered in January by KP Prakash, a businessman who lives in Vikas Puri in Delhi, said Reeta Yadav, in-charge of the cybercrime police station in Sector 36, Noida.
“In his complaint, Prakash said that on October 10 and 11, 2022, ₹1 crore was transferred from the bank account of his firm, Royalex Exports, which is located in the Noida Special Economic Zone (NSEZ). He said that the firm’s registered contact number linked to the bank account was blocked on October 9, after which this transaction occurred. A first information report was filed under sections of cheating and relevant provisions of the IT Act,” said the officer.
During the investigation, she said, the suspects were discovered to have blocked the SIM card registered in the company’s bank account and hacked the company’s email via VPN (virtual private network).
“At least one-and-a-half months before transferring the funds, the suspects sent a phishing email to the company email address. The complainant had clicked on it, which activated a keylogger (a type of surveillance technology used to monitor and record each keystroke on a specific computer), allowing the suspects to obtain all of the victim’s passwords,” said Yadav.
The suspects later obtained confidential information about the company’s bank account and which SIM card number was registered as a beneficiary illegally.
“The suspects then blocked the SIM card and generated an e-SIM card, using which they could approve the transaction from the company’s bank account and transfer ₹1 crore in four different instalments across four accounts over two days on October 10 and 11. The suspects used the dark web to accomplish this,” said Yadav.
“The suspects were tracked down using electronic surveillance and arrested from a hotel in Varanasi by cybercrime police on Sunday. They said that they had committed at least 15 such cyber crimes, which investigators are verifying. The suspects’ accomplices who helped them in this are also being tracked down,” said Yadav.
“During the investigation, it was discovered that the suspects are connected to more than 15 WhatsApp and Telegram chat groups. To conceal their identities from one another on these chat groups, the suspects used names based on characters from the web series Money Heist. The suspects obtained confidential information about other companies through these chat groups,” said the officer.
“The arrested suspects were identified as Ritesh Chaturvedi alias Amit Singh alias Saurabh Yadav, 41, and Rishabh Jain alias Prince Thakur alias Munna Lal, 35. Chaturvedi has been imprisoned previously in Gujarat, and Jain in Madhya Pradesh, both on charges of cheating and forgery. While Chaturvedi named himself after the character ‘Professor’ from the Money Heist show, Jain named himself after another character from the show, ‘Rio’. While Chaturvedi worked on hacking and obtaining confidential company information, Jain worked on providing bank accounts where the money was transferred,” she added.