BENGALURU: Cybercrime police have arrested three people for cheating a private bank by creating a fake state government email ID and sending 18 fake court orders to it to transfer Rs 1.32 crore from two frozen accounts.
The accused have been identified as Abhimanyu Kumar Panday and Neeraj Singh of New Delhi and Sagar Lakura, a resident of Rajasthan.
According to police sources, Sagar created the government email ID, cb-crime-sog@karnataka.gov.in, by providing false information to the Karnataka State Wide Area Network (KSWAN), developed by the Centre for e-governance of the state government to provide secure network connectivity and bandwidth upgradation on-demand to user departments across the state.
Using this email ID, the accused sent fake court order copies to the nodal email ID of the private bank at Halasuru Gate in Bengaluru, where some accounts had been frozen on court orders. The accused had gathered details of frozen bank accounts online, the sources said.
Accused sent 18 fake court orders to bank’s email
Between September 2024 and February 2025, the accused sent 18 fake court orders to the bank’s email address, requesting release of funds from two frozen accounts. One of the accused called an employee of the bank on his cell phone and asked him to release funds. The employee, after verifying the email and seeing the mobile number, believed that the request was legitimate and transferred Rs 1,32,28,293 from two accounts to another private bank account provided by the accused, the sources said.
After this transaction, the bank manager suspected some foul play and filed a complaint with the city’s cyber crime police. A police team, which launched an investigation, traced the bank transaction details, identified the account holder, and issued a notice to the accused. During interrogation, he confessed to the crime and revealed the involvement of two others. The police froze a bank account belonging to one of the accused, which had Rs 63 lakh. The trio spent the remaining money.