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2 Gujarat men steal Rs 30 lakh from recharge app, held
The accused made over 20,000 transactions between March and September 2018, causing a loss of nearly Rs 30 lakh to the company.
Cyber police officials have arrested two Gujarat-based individuals for hacking into a mobile and direct-to-home (DTH) television recharge application and carrying out over 20,000 unauthorised transactions worth Rs 30 lakh.
The accused, Maheshbhai Jadhav, 28, and Mahesh Solanki, 30, both residents of Bhavnagar, Gujarat, were arrested on Tuesday and brought to Mumbai.
According to police sources, the complainant company, which has its office in Andheri, has a mobile app which offers recharge services for mobiles and DTH television of leading service providers.
“They [the accused] first created their accounts on the app and then bought recharges. The company would send the recharge to the accused’s accounts, but when they were supposed to pay for it, the accused would cancel the transactions. On cancellation, the recharge should have gone back to the company, but it did not [due to a technical error]. The accused took advantage of this glitch and later sold the recharges to other customers and pocketed the money,” said a police source.
“The company had suspended their direct customer service as they were testing it. The accused made over 20,000 transactions between March and September 2018, causing a loss of nearly Rs 30 lakh to the company,” said an officer privy to the probe.
On September 14, the company lodged a case with the cybercrime unit and on Tuesday, police traced the two accused to Bhavnagar in Gujarat, where they were arrested. The two were brought to Mumbai and produced in court. They have been remanded in police custody till September 24.
Jadhav works in a diamond workshop while Solanki does odd jobs. The two revealed to police that they spent most of the fraudulently-obtained money on gambling, homes repairs, and shopping.
Police suspect that two more individuals may be involved in a similar fraud related to the complainant.
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