In the latest addition to cyber crimes, phishers managed to embezzle more than Rs 5 lakh from the Andhra Pradesh Road transport Corporation’s (APSRTC) bank accounts through refunds after booking more than 100 fake tickets and cancelling them.
The money was laundered through online portals in Vizianagaram and Hyderabad, and was stolen over a period of two and a half months.
Both RTC and police officials suspect that the fraud was perpetrated by some authorised agents of the RTC, with the help of employees. The fraudulent transactions were noticed by RTC officials last week and a case was registered under section 66 of the IT Act and 420 IPC by the cyber crime sleuths at the central crime (CCS). The complaint was lodged by one Chander Rao, a traffic manager, at Mahatma Gandhi bus station (MGBS), Afzalgunj.
According to Rao’s complaint, some people, reportedly authorised agents of the corporation, managed to get the passwords of the account from which money is credited to their bank accounts. RTC agents cannot book tickets unless they have credit in their accounts, and to get money in the accounts, they have to first pay RTC and get money credited.
“Once they have the credit, they can then sell tickets to customers. In the same way, if a customer cancels his ticket, the agent repays him and then we will refund the agent. In this case, the thieves pilfered credit money in their accounts and then made fake transactions; they sold tickets, cancelled them, and then transferred the money back to their accounts,” explained the investigating officer. The fake transactions began in March this year, he said.
RTC official GV Ramana Rao said all the internet protocol (IP) addresses of the corporation were blocked immediately after the matter came to light. “We also blocked the accounts as well to avoid further problems. And more over, from this year on, we are going to implement a strict Net banking system for all transactions from June, and such instances won’t be repeated,” he stated.