Nigerian phisher was Caught by Delhi Police

Two persons including a Nigerian have been arrested by cyber crime division of Delhi Police in India for reportedly hacking several bank accounts in the city, as reported by TheHindu on May 15, 2008.

The convicts have been recognized as Ibimina Joshua (38), Felix Awatefe (33), both of them are Nigerians, and the mastermind is from Manipur known as Nurul Huda Khan. Further, Felix is out of job and was also arrested in 2006 for a lottery fraud in which he deceived several people of Rs 17 Lakh.

It was in February 2008, when the Risk Control Unit of HDFC Bank reported a complaint to the police after a bank customer from Delhi reported to the bank. The customer told the bank that an amount of Rs 1.75 Lakh had been illegally transferred to the account of M Basumatari, a customer of HDFC. The bank also informed that it had got many complaints from Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai.

The convicts shift the amount to accounts owned by their friends who were also paid commissions. Then, the account holder withdrew the money and gave it to Nurul who, further, transferred it to Ibimina. After that, he would handle the money to Felix and two other Nigerians, Obruche and Mike.

As told by the police, these hackers send mails with an unauthentic logo of the bank to the users, and informed them that their accounts have a systematic error, which will prohibit them from carrying out transactions on the Internet. To solve the error, they ask the users to respond them with their customer ID number and password.

In this way, the hackers sent huge bulk mails and transferred money from the users who replied. Also, the convicts hacked almost 23 accounts and transferred Rs 33.5 Lakh.

Also, most of the people do not pay proper attention to the warnings issued by security experts and reply to these mails. Consequently, their internet bank numbers and passwords get divulged without their consent.

An official of Department of Cyber Crime at New Delhi, S.P Mahesh, said that banks, which are offering internet banking, should build a rapid awareness campaign to help users and should make them understand that they should contact the banks in case of any suspicious mails of these kinds, as per the reports of TOI on May 15, 2008.

Related article: Nigerian Scammers Secure Huge Money from Australian Victims

» SPAMfighter News - 5/23/2008