SBI, Axis Bank wallet apps hacked to siphon off crores

SBI, Axis Bank wallet apps hacked to siphon off crores

By ET Bureau | 12 Jan, 2016, 10.15PM IST

BENGALURU: City’s cyber-crime police attached to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) have arrested seven persons including a deputy manager with Axis bank’s Peddapalli branch (Kareemnagar, Telangana) for allegedly hacking the wallet apps of Axis bank (LIME) and State Bank of India (Buddy).

The arrested persons are: G Gopikrishna Niranjan Reddy, deputy manager of Axis bank, 30, G Veerabrahmam, 23, CK Ramana, 27, Nageshwara Reddy, all from Kareemnagar and CS Kiran, 33, CS Padmaja, 35, and N Ramesh, 30, from Srinivasapura, Kolar.

Last year, many Axis bank account holders, mainly from Mysore and Tumakuru in Karnataka, had filed police complaints reporting loss of cash from their accounts.

The case was transferred to the Cyber crime wing of the CID last year. The team finally zeroed in on the accused after tracking their mobile, internet and other devices.

According to police, Nageshwara Reddy along with Veerabrahmam, had obtained duplicate SIM cards of complainant’s registered mobile number with the bank, from Vodafone, BSNL, Aircel and other stores across the state, by submitting fake documents and also changed the plan from prepaid to postpaid. Later, the accused transferred the amount to different mobile numbers using mobile banking and the LIME wallet options of Axis bank and later withdrew the amount from Axis bank ATMs.

Ramesh, Kiran and Padmaraj helped Nageshwara Reddy and his accomplices in obtaining more than 100 fake SIM cards, which were used in committing the crime, the police said.

The mobile services providers issued duplicate sim cards without proper verification of the original user. Reliance has allegedly provided more than 100 SIM cards to the accused, the police said. Following the complaints, Axis Bank has stopped operating its LIME application.

CID IGP Hemanth Nimbalkar said that a special cyber police team has been formed to investigate into the matter. “CID-Dy SP MD Sharath and his team tracked the internet path used by the miscreants to hack the bank accounts. Using the duplicate SIM cards, the accused got new OTP (One Time Password) of nine customers from Karnataka and siphoned around Rs 25 lakhs from their accounts. We suspect that the gang has conned more victims and are continuing the investigation,” he added.