Man hacks retired diplomat’s email, extorts his contacts for money, held

The suspect, Akram Ali, had also used a similar modus operandi to pose as an income tax and excise department officer to blackmail and extort other people for money, said Atul Kumar Thakur, the deputy commissioner of police (south).

A 40-year-old man from Delhi hacked the email account of a retired senior diplomat and used it to dupe his contacts by sending them requests for financial help, said the police on Tuesday after arresting the man and uncovering an elaborate fraud in which he had allegedly made more than ₹1 crore.

The cyber team of the south Delhi district police were alerted of this modus operandi when the consulate general of a Latin American country approached the police with a complaint late last month.

The suspect, Akram Ali, had also used a similar modus operandi to pose as an income tax and excise department officer to blackmail and extort other people for money, said Atul Kumar Thakur, the deputy commissioner of police (south).

The police said Ali, who lives in south Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, has only studied till Class 10 but allegedly came up with an idea that involved hacking the email accounts of prominent people and then either emotionally blackmailing their contacts into transferring money as financial help or extorting them for money. He used to work for a newspaper agency as part of the distribution team.

The cyber team of the south Delhi district police were alerted of this modus operandi when the consulate general of a Latin American country approached the police with a complaint late last month.

“The diplomat’s email contacts had received requests for financial help from his email ID. Two of his contacts had even helped with contributions of about ₹1.4 lakh. When he later interacted with one of them, he found that his email account was used fraudulently to send those requests,” said the DCP.

When the police began probing the alleged fraud, they traced the IP addresses and the bank accounts in which the money had been deposited. “But we found that the accounts had been created using Aadhaar cards that had addresses in which the account holders did not live currently, and SIM cards using the same fake addresses,” said the DCP.

The police connected one of the Aadhaar numbers to a labourer in Delhi. They said the labourer was living in a new place.

When the labourer allegedly identified Ali as the man who had got his address on the Aadhaar card changed, arranged for his stay in a rented home and opened multiple bank accounts in his name, the police realised they had stumbled upon a well-planned fraud.

“To receive the extortion money in bank accounts without being traced, Ali had approached about a dozen labourers who had Aadhaar cards, but they couldn’t be traced back to the address recorded on them,” said the DCP.

The process would begin with Ali promising ₹10,000-₹20,000 to the labourers if they did as he said.

“Ali would first rent rooms for these labourers. He would then change their addresses in the Aadhaar cards. Using the new address, he would open four-five bank accounts in each of their names. He would also procure SIM cards in their names and keep them,” said the DCP.

Ali would then allegedly guide his potential victims to a web link which could be used to make the payments — which would land in the bank accounts of the labourers. Ali would then withdraw the money from ATMs.

The police said that after Ali was arrested from his home on Sunday, he confessed to cheating many more people using similar techniques. “But it is unlikely that this man is operating alone. It required multiple skills and he could be working with more people. He has named one other person and we are ascertaining that person’s involvement and trying to nab him,” said another police officer.