IT engineer hacks into bourse, steals ₹42 lakh, arrested

The accused, identified as Vignesh Kannan, 28, is a resident of Chennai and works at an IT company.

The Maharashtra Cyber police’s nodal police station arrested an IT engineer on Tuesday for allegedly hacking into the payment gateway system of a bourse and siphoning off ₹42 lakh since 2017. Police said the cheating had gone on undetected as the accused siphoned off small amounts of money at a time.

The Maharashtra Cyber police’s nodal police station arrested an IT engineer on Tuesday for allegedly hacking into the payment gateway system of a bourse and siphoning off ₹42 lakh since 2017.

The accused, identified as Vignesh Kannan, 28, is a resident of Chennai and works at an IT company. However, Kannan wanted to make some money on the side and allegedly used to hack into the account of the bourse, a globally recognised clearing corporation.

Kannan had started trading through the bourse in 2016, police said.

“Kannan used to buy mutual fund units worth ₹1 lakh but paid the stock market just ₹10,000 by hacking into its payment gateway and using a data manipulator software to change the figures. As the amounts were small it escaped scrutiny. Due to Kannan’s technical background, committing such a crime was easy for him,” said a cyber police officer.

After these irregularities were noticed by the officials of the bourse they approached the Maharashtra cyber police earlier this year and lodged a complaint.