Five Nigerians were among six persons arrested from Bangalore on charges of hacking bank accounts of several people and fraudulently transferring money from such accounts, a senior police officer said here today.
Based on a complaint of a branch manager of a private bank here that Rs 5 lakh was fraudulently transferred to a Kanpur-based bank account, the Central Crime Station (CCS) took up the investigation.
After electronic surveillance one P Jaydeep Patwari and five Nigerian nationals were arrested, Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anurag Sharma told reporters.
None of the arrested Nigerians Sunny Uche Uzoma, Michael Animba, Onyegbuna Udochukwu, Nwazonobi Amaeze Obed and Tinuola Yussuf had valid documents and they were all found to be overstaying in India, he said. They are suspected to have cheated people to the tune of crores of rupees, he said.
Explaining the modus operandi of the 'phishing' scam, Sharma said Indian associates (of the Nigerians) used to open bank accounts with forged documents in different cities.
The Nigerians also extracted emails from the Internet and bought up universal resource locators (URLs) to send fake emails to bank customers containing fake bank homepages to fool customers into divulging their online banking details.
"The customers sent their online banking details which landed up with Nigerians on the fraudulent URL," he said.
The accused then allegedly targeted accounts with huge cash and passed on victims' details to their Indian associates who used fake ID proofs of customers and transferred funds (through different modes of net banking) to one of the fraudulent accounts," the senior police officer said.
After analysing computers and smartphones used by the accused, over 100 bank customers whose accounts were hacked by phishing were alerted to prevent further losses, he said.
