Haryana techie held for making bogus Mhada housing lottery website

A 27-year-old techie from Haryana has been arrested by the officers from Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) cyber police station for allegedly creating a fake website of Maharashtra Housing and Area Developing Authority (Mhada).

A 27-year-old techie from Haryana has been arrested by the officers from Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) cyber police station for allegedly creating a fake website of Maharashtra Housing and Area Developing Authority (Mhada).

Theman, who holds a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree, said he created a website claiming to be a Mhada website last year as well, say the police.

According to the police, some Mhada officials learnt on April 13 that someone had created a bogus website — www.mhadalottery2015.in — claiming to be the website for Mhada lottery and could be cheating people, who intended to apply for the lottery, for which an advertisement had been published on April 15. A case was registered and a probe was launched by the BKC cyber police.

Mhada has an official website for housing lottery - https://lottery.mhada.gov.in.

Sources said the accused was trapped on Thursday when he came to Mumbai to visit someone. He was arrested in the evening. Senior inspector Sunil Ghosalkar confirmed the arrest and said the accused would be produced in court on Friday.

They added that the accused had created the bogus website to earn money by getting maximum hits or visits on the website. The sources said the accused was getting $125150 every day from the service provider, Google, which would publish its advertisements on the website.

An officer said that the accused, while registering the fake website with the service provider, used the name of the Mhada official, who had registered the website with the service provider. It is likely that the police have seized the accused’s laptop, which he used to make the website.