Online Banking Fraud Case
Four members of the racket, including two close relatives, all residents of Mumbai and Thane have been arrested and brought to Indore.
Four arrested persons, aged between 35 and 45 years, have been identified as Lalbahadur Sharma (resident of Mumbai's Prabhadevi area), his brother-in-law Jagdish Sharma (Jogeshwari West-Mumbai), Harish Ramchandani (Navi Mumbai) and Suresh Joshi (Thane), superintendent of police (SP Indore West) Abid Khan said on Wednesday.
Investigations have revealed that online phishers, while using net banking password of Joshi's bank account with the ICICI Bank, withdrew Rs 8.85 lakh from pharma company manager's account on June 4 and 5, 2014, and transferred it to four different accounts in Mumbai, Rajasthan and Kolkata.
The entire sum was subsequently withdrawn by fraudsters via bank cheques, the investigations by city police crime branch have revealed.
According to additional SP (Indore West Zone II) Vinay Prakash Paul, Rs 5 lakh was transferred into Lalbahadur's account opened by his brother-in-law with ICICI Bank in Mumbai on May 31, 2014 and withdrawn later.
"It seems that since Dilip Joshi didn't change the net banking password allotted by the bank at the time opening account, the same password was retrieved by tricksters to commit the major fraud," added Paul.
Not only did online phishers siphon off money from Joshi's account, but also managed to block the bank SMS alerts on his phone, which could have alerted him about the fraud.
Joshi came to know about the fraud, when the bank alerted him about too low balance to pay the EMI of a MUV purchased by him, after which a case under Information and Technology Act, 2000, was lodged at city's Annapurna police station on July 25.
Joshi had originally opened the account in ICICI Bank in Mumbai a few years ago, but got it transferred to Indore on shifting base to the city. Investigations have revealed that the fraudsters got access of ID proof used by Joshi to open the bank account in the past in Mumbai.
The same documents were subsequently used by the tricksters to get a SIM card of Joshi's cell-phone number from a telecom operator in Indore and then block bank SMS alerts on his phone.
Another member of the racket Nazir Hussain has been arrested by Mumbai police in another case, while efforts are on to nab more members of the racket, who could number 8-10. Involvement of ex-cop of Mumbai police and employees of the concerned private bank is also being probed.
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