INDIA. Mumbai: A man who hacked the e-mail ID of an entertainment company and siphoned off nearly Rs.11 lakh was arrested while he was trying to withdraw the siphoned amount from an ATM kiosk at Goregaon West by the Oshiwara Police located in North-West Mumbai.
The accused, identified as Abrar Abdul Sahud Ahmed (32), who is said to be an expert in “man-in-the-email” cyber-attacks, originally hails from village Bela, District Vaishali, Bihar, and was residing at Bhagatsingh Nagar in Goregaon West in North Mumbai. He was arrested while withdrawing money from an ATM kiosk late Tuesday evening. He has been remanded to police custody.
According to the police, the owner of the “Shabir Ahmed Entertainment Company” – Mohmed Dawood Bashir Sayyed (62) on August 20 presented two songs by Deepak Mukut of the “Soham Rockstar Entertainment Private Limited”. On August 26, Mukut agreed to buy the songs for Rs 10.62 lakh each. Soham Rockstar then asked Shabir Ahmed to forward bank invoices.
Accordingly, Shabir Ahmed forwarded invoices from his e-mail ID 969928491d@gmail.com to accounts@sohamrockstar.com and shailendra@sohamrockstar.com of Soham Rockstar and gave his Account No 24305107853 at Standard Chartered Bank.
On August 30, Soham Rockstar’s Accountant Mehul Shah informed him that an amount of Rs.10,47,600/- was transferred to his account. But when Shabir Ahmed checked his bank account, he realized that the money was not deposited.
Further probe revealed that his e-mail ID 969928491d@gmail.com was hacked and replaced with a new ID 969928491b@gmail.com, and an amount of Rs 10,47,600 was transferred to Account No 2899101010696 with Canara Bank by some unknown person.
As such, an FIR (No 1315/2022) under sections 419 and420 Indian Penal Code and sections 66(C)(D) IT Act 2000 was registered with the Oshiwara police station.
After registering the complaint, the police managed to get the bank account of the accused, Abrar Abdul Sahud Ahmed, to which the money was transferred. After freezing the transaction, the police officers tracked 10-15 bank accounts to which the accused could have transferred the money and also linked the mobile phone number to the accounts.
“We then traced the location of the mobile and found the user near Hill Ozon Tower in Goregaon West. Our officers then laid a trap at the spot and saw the accused entering an ATM kiosk to withdraw cash and arrested him,” Senior Police Inspector Manohar Dhanavade said.
On search, the police team found 25 Debit cards, 19 bank Pass Books, 12 Blank Cheques, 04 mobile phones, 01 Simcard (Airtel), 03 Aaadhar cards with different names, 02 voter Identity cards, 01 Pancard, 03 Rubber stamps of different companies-03 and cash of Rs 40,000/- with the accused.
On investigation, the police found that the accused had acquired SIM cards with the help of fake address documents. They also found that he was a member of the Cyber fraud gang active in Jamtara in Jharkhand, a North Indian state, and had come to Mumbai a few days ago. “The accused had committed the crime on his visit to Mumbai and was about to leave for Jharkhand with the cash,” Dhanavade said.
Jamtara, a small town in Jharkhand, has been nicknamed the phishing capital of India. It got this title because there have been numerous phishing incidents across the country, whose centre point was this town.
The investigation was made under the supervision of DCP Manjunath Shinge by Sr PI Manohar Dhanawade, PI Seema Sakunde, PSI Digambar Kurkute, Head Constable Ashok Konde, and Constable Vikram Sarnobat.
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