Hyderabad Cyberabad Police Exposed Cyber Scam

On February 2, HDFC Bank officials filed a formal complaint with the Cyberabad police about a credit card transaction in the name of Palaparthi Raghuram, a former employee of Infosys.

Raghuram had killed himself at his office premises on September 14 last year. “People from the credit card company visited the residence of the deceased and that’s when his wife found out that her husband’s credentials were being used by fraudsters. She alerted the bank,” said Srinivas, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Cyberabad (Cybercrime).

After months of investigation, the Cyberabad police in Hyderabad on Saturday arrested 6 men for allegedly using credentials of deceased techies to forge documents to avail instant loans, procure credit cards, and even withdraw money from their bank accounts.

The police have arrested N Phani Chowdary, the prime accused in the case, along with Mandava Swaroop Nath Chowdary, P Srinivas Rao, Kandru Harish, N Venu Gopal, and IV Veera Shekar Rao alias Chinta Srinivas Rao, for the fraud.

The 6 accused had accumulated a total amount of Rs 53 lakhs using the private data of 4 deceased techies.

Police said that the fraudsters were able to pull off the crime as banks were willing to provide instant loans with little or no physical verification.

Investigation revealed that fraudsters planned to impersonate dead people and avail loans from banks using forged documents of the deceased. The fraudsters managed to get customer ID and bank account numbers by visiting the banks, physically claiming that they needed the bank account number to deposit money using the deceased’s phone numbers.

Using the customer ID, and the mobile number, they generate passwords using the forgot password option. The email IDs were sourced online or from the banks by just providing deceased phone numbers. Then they requested the banks to change the registered email IDs. Once they logged in, they just changed passwords and raised requests for instant pre-approved loans and credit and debit cards.

The fraudsters later transferred the loan and balance amounts form the deceased’s accounts to their bank accounts. They also placed requests for new credit and debit cards, collecting them using fake ID proofs.