New Delhi:

In a major cyber heist, over Rs 16 crore was cleaned out of Nainital Bank’s Noida branch after its servers were hacked and money was transferred to 89 different accounts.

Cybercriminals entered the bank’s Real Time Gross Settlement, or RTGS, channel by hacking the manager’s login credentials and wiped out Rs 16.5 crore between June 16 and June 20.

The bank’s IT manager, Sumit Kumar Srivastava, went to the cyber crime police station and filed a complaint. The balance sheet was being tallied for June when the heist was noticed, Mr Srivastava said in his complaint.

On June 17, the balance sheet was found short of Rs 3,60,94,020 during a regular audit of the RTGS, the complaint said, adding that the fraud was revealed when they could not match the balance sheet for several days. 

“A case has been registered by the IT manager of the Nainital Bank. He said that about Rs 16.5 crore was withdrawn by hacking the manager’s credentials and the bank’s server. This happened between June 16 and June 20. The money was transferred to 89 accounts. A team has been formed to probe the matter,” ACP Cyber Crime Vivek Ranjan Rai told NDTV.

Noida:

Greater Noida resident who was duped of around Rs 35 lakh by cyber thugs has got back Rs 18 lakh, police said on Wednesday.

The 71-year-old resident of Alpha 2 was defrauded on the pretext of investment in the share market, the police said.

A police spokesperson said the senior citizen approached the local Beta 2 police station on March 3 with a complaint about the Rs 35 lakh fraud.

“An FIR was lodged in the case and the matter was taken up for investigation by the cyber cell. Subsequently, Rs 18,16,245 of the victim was returned to his account,” the spokesperson said.

The police said further probe was underway to recover the remaining amount and trace the accused behind the fake share market app. They also urged citizens to be cautious of such cyber crimes which lure people on the pretext of investment or quick money.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Mangaluru:

A retired engineer was allegedly cheated of Rs 1.6 crore by frauds here who asked for “caution money” to ward off a possible probe by a central investigative agency, police said on Thursday.

The accused, posing as employees of an international courier service, claimed that a package the victim sent had incriminating documents and drugs and probe agencies knew of it, they said.

They allegedly asked for “caution deposit” saying it will be returned once the investigation is over, and the victim paid Rs 1.6 crore to them, police added.

The alleged transactions happened between May 2-6 and the matter came to light when the man told his daughter about it.

Police said a case regarding the incident has been registered at the Cyber, Economic and Narcotics Crime Police Station in in Mangaluru city.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

After two Gurugram residents were duped of nearly Rs 2 crore by cyberfraudsters, a marketing professional from Chennai on Tuesday said she received a similar scam call claiming her Aadhaar number was used to send drugs to Thailand. 

In a series of posts on X, Lavanya Mohan detailed the conversation she had with a man posing as a customer care executive from delivery service FedEx claiming drugs were being transported internationally using her ID. 

Two weeks ago, there was news of one man from Gurgaon losing 56 Lakhs to a scammer and another, 1.3 Crores. I got the same call today.

A customer care exec from FedEx will call you and say that your Aadhar card is being misused to send packages with drugs to Thailand.

— Lavanya Mohan (@lavsmohan) March 5, 2024

“Two weeks ago, there was news of one man from Gurgaon losing 56 Lakhs to a scammer and another, 1.3 Crores. I got the same call today. A customer care exec from FedEx will call you and say that your Aadhar card is being misused to send packages with drugs to Thailand,” she wrote.

To make it sound like a legitimate concern, the caller also provided her with fake package details, an FIR number and also their own FedEx employee ID. The caller then offered to connect her to a customs official to solve the issue.

“Ma’am, if you don’t go ahead with the complaint, your Aadhar will continue to be misused so let me connect you right away with the cyber crime branch” Threatening consequences + urgency = scam,” she wrote.

Ms Mohan said the caller even warned her of “rising scams” and offered to help her with the issue urgently by contacting the police.  

“Whats worrying is the level of details he had to provide me. The modus operandi is they connect you to the police who then claim that your ID is linked to the underworld. People are losing their hard-earned money and they can’t be blamed because these scams are growing more sophisticated,” she said.

Warning against falling for such “sophisticated” threats, Ms Mohan said it was highly unlikely that a delivery service would contact you over a serious issue like this, adding that if your ID was being misused the police are likely visit you personally to inform you.

“Anyway, I told the scammer I’d wait for the police to contact me and cut the call,” she said.

Anyway, I told the scammer I’d wait for the police to contact me and cut the call. Here are some more ways you can protect yourself: https://t.co/UVkkiV3Gkg

— Lavanya Mohan (@lavsmohan) March 5, 2024

Similar cyber scams that use highly-detailed information to appear genuine have been reported very frequently across the country over the past few months.

In February, Debraj Mitra, a resident of Gurugram, received a similar call informing him that a package containing passports, credit cards, drugs and laptops linked to the “Mumbai underworld” were sent from Taiwan to Mumbai using his Aadhaar details. 

Callers, posing as a Mumbai Crime Branch officials, contacted him through Skype and made him transfer all his funds into a bank account for “monitoring”. Before he realised he was being scammed, Mr Mitra had transferred a total sum of ₹ 56,70,000 to the bank account shared by the fraudsters.

Mumbai:

 The Maharashtra cabinet on Wednesday gave its nod for a Rs 837 crore cyber safety project to deal with cyber crimes in the state.

The project aims to bring all modern technologies under one umbrella, which will also include a control and command centre, technology-assisted investigation, a centre of excellence, a Computer Emergency Response Team, a cloud-based data centre, a security operations centre, the government said in a statement.

Under this project, people can register their complaints on a 24×7 call centre, according to the decision passed by the state cabinet.

Cyber crimes will be probed with modern technologies and skilled manpower, which can enable them to investigate the case thoroughly and also ensure conviction, the statement said.

In another decision passed by the cabinet, financially-stressed sugar cooperative factories will get loans from state cooperative banks with the assurance from the state government.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)