VELLORE: After almost seven weeks of investigation, Vellore Cyber Crime police arrested the prime accused in a financial fraud case involving government funds. The accused allegedly siphoned off Rs 70 lakh from the Block Development Office (BDO) in Katpadi by illegally accessing its portal.
On November 15, a BDO staff noticed something 'fishy' where two transactions under the 'noon-meal' salary category were made to two beneficiaries, successfully clearing the verification process without officials' knowledge.
The incident was reported to the police the same day and on November 17, Katpadi BDO Raghu lodged a complaint with the Cyber Crime police unit.
A preliminary probe launched by investigation officer J Abarna and the team found that the transactions were made by some fraudsters.
The beneficiaries, who went by the name of Vijayan and Jayakumar, were found to be receiving Rs 50 lakhs and Rs 20 lakhs respectively to their current accounts.
"We checked with the banks and found that there was a name mismatch in both the accounts. Due to the mismatch, the amount processed to Jayakumar account was frozen. However, Vijayan received it and before the bank froze his account, he managed to withdraw Rs 35,000, " investigation officer, Abarna, told TNIE
Real names come to light
The cybercrime unit formed a 12-member team including computer experts. During the investigation, the real names of the account holders were identified as Prabu and Poovarasan.
A police officer, who was part of the investigation team, said Prabu was running an e-service centre opposite Tirupattur bus stand. "Firstly, we identified three people to be involved in the crime. Prabu and Jeeva, who works at Prabu's centre and Poovarasan who is Jeeva's friend. Till that point, we didn't know another man existed and that he would turn out to be the prime accused. He was the main reason behind the whole fraudulent transaction," Abarna said.
Before the crime, he introduced himself as government staff and first approached Jeeva who was at the centre at that time. He said he can get them government funds and to do that he needed some 30% commission. To prove his words, he accessed the government portals with a unique ID and password, the investigation officer said.
Jeeva took this to Prabu who agreed to it and so did his friend Poovarasan. Further probe revealed the identity of the fourth person as Sampath Kumar. Using Call Detail Record (CDR), CCTV footage, and other intelligence, we tracked him from Vellore to Tirupattur, Pochampalli, and Erode, Abarna said.
During the investigation, we found that Sampath Kumar was not his real name and that he used it to deliberately hide his identity. He was identified as Mohan (24), a computer operator and a temporary staff at the BDO, Mecheri in Salem district.
There, he learned the unique ID and password of government staff and used this ID to commit the financial fraud after the staff was transferred to Katpadi BDO, the investigation officer said. He was arrested on December 31.