In a major breakthrough, Karnataka's Cyber Crime police of the Corps of Detectives arrested seven people, who allegedly hacked various bank accounts on Internet and siphoned off close to Rs 12 lakhs (Rs 1.2 million).
The kingpin of the racket, Joseph, an unemployed techie hailing from Virudunagar in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu, was nabbed from a cyber cafe in Mahadevapura near Whitefield by the police on November 29. Six of his associates have also been nabbed.
The police tracked the accused by tracing the IP address of the PC from where the accounts were hacked.
"A raid on Joseph's house revealed that he had information relating to the user names and passwords of 100 bank accounts belonging to HDFC, Axis Bank, Citibank and ICICI Bank. The banks have confirmed the authenticity of 70 accounts. The accused has hacked 17 of these 70 internet bank accounts. Investigations are on," Cyber Crime Superintendent of Police B A Mahesh told reporters on Friday.
According to the police, Joseph visited the cyber cafes during the first week of every month. "He installed the software -- Keylogger -- a freely available solution that tracks and records the key stroke of every PC user. He would then use this recorded data to hack the internet bank accounts," Mahesh said.
After hacking the accounts, the accused transferred money to his associates' accounts. "For every transfer, his associates received commission. We have nabbed six of them. This could be a major racket," Mahesh added.
The police took up the case after four account holders of Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and Citibank lodged complaints.
"One particular complaint was filed by Carl Braganza, a HR Manager of an IT firm. The accused had siphoned off Rs 1,27,000 from his Citibank account on a single day. While Rs 87,500 was paid towards mobile currency re-charge, Rs 46,000 was transferred to other Citibank accounts," the police official said.
The accused worked for various companies before taking to hacking internet bank accounts.