CYBER fraudsters have taken deceitful activities to a new level by using fraudulent emails that mimic the official email addresses of the Nagpur Cyber Police to dupe victims. The modus operendi involves creating an email account that closely resembles those used by the cyber police. This allows the scammers to trick banks into freezing victims’ accounts. They then demand money from the victims to unfreeze their accounts, only to dupe them of lakhs of rupees. A case came to light thanks to the vigilance of Sweta Kuma Trilochan Panigrahi, an assistant manager at ICICI Bank. The accused sent an email to Panigrahi’s bank email account from an address resembling a cyber police e-mail ID: [email protected]. This domain, which typically indicates a government affiliation, raised Panigrahi’s suspicions.

 

He conducted an internal investigation and discovered the email was fraudulent. Panigrahi then alerted the Nagpur Cyber Police. DCP Detection Nimit Goyal confirmed that this type of fraud was unprecedented. Following the complaint, a thorough investigation was launched which led to the arrest of Pradum Anil Singh (26) from Malad East, Mumbai and Shubham Pitambar Sahu (32) from Mulund West, Mumbai. Both fraudsters have been charged and are currently in police custody until August 14. During interrogation, it was revealed that the fraudsters had coordinated with six different banks—SBI, HDFC, Bank of Baroda, AU Small Finance Bank, Federal Bank, Punjab National Bank, and IndusInd Bank. They had targeted a total of 176 accounts across these institutions.

 

The police are now investigating these emails to uncover the full extent of the scam. DCP Goyal noted that newforms of cyber fraud are emerging and urgedthe public toremain vigilant. The police areinvestigation asto how thef r a u d s t e r sobtained thevictims’ banking information. The police have frozen theaccounts of the accused andreimbursed the stolen funds tothe victims. However, thesource of the bank data remainsunclear.There is suspicion thatinsiders from within the banksmight be supplying this sensitive information.