HYDERABAD: Cyberabad cyber crime sleuths on Thursday busted a seven-member gang of high-tech criminals who cloned at least 10,000 fingerprints they acquired from the IGRS portal of Stamps and Registration department to withdraw money from the accounts of their victims.
Printing the cloned fingerprints on polymer, the gang, led by the mastermind Nallagalla Venkateshwarlu used to download documents from the IGRS portal. The gang, also comprising Shankar Naik, Ratham Srinivas, Darshanam Samelu, Challa Manikanta, Sheik Khasim, and Vishwanathula, exploited a loophole that the application of the complainant -- ePoint India -- provided. The loophole was that the application allowed users access to details of the applicants, including the fingerprints.
Exploiting this loophole, the gang downloaded the files and identified the bank accounts of their victims with the help of an application. They proceeded to withdraw Rs 14 lakh from 149 accounts. Of this amount, the cybercrime sleuths managed to recover Rs 3.4 lakh so far.
According to police, the application used to identify the bank accounts was developed in Andhra Pradesh. The victims too hail from that state and are registered with ePoint India which provides limited online banking services to the needy customers of all banks using the AEPS (Aadhar Enabled Payment System) method.
The company provides its agents user IDs and passwords to the agents to facilitate bill payments, money withdrawal and transfer through its app. The incident came to light when ePoint India approached Cyberabad cyber crime police and lodged a complaint regarding the fraud.
FIRM provides user IDs and passwords
The company provides its agents user IDs and passwords to the agents to facilitate bill payments, money withdrawal and transfer through its app. The incident came to light when ePoint India approached Cyberabad cybercrime police and lodged a complaint regarding the fraud