Shipra Malhotra

The Economic Offences Wing, Crime Branch, Delhi Police, received a complaint from the vice president, Operations, UTI Bank that many customers of various UTI banks in Delhi, Vishakapatnam, Thane, Nasik, and Ahmedabad received emails claiming to have originated from the bank. Recipients of fake mails were told to update their bank account information on the pretext that their account information was being updated. These emails included a hyperlink within the email itself, and a click on the link took the recipients to a Web page, which was identical to UTI's Web page. Some unsuspecting recipients responded to these mails, and gave their login information and passwords. Later on, through Internet banking, a large number of fraudulent transactions took place. These transactions resulted in loss of over Rs. 20 lakh for customers with bank accounts in Delhi, Vishakapatnam, Thane, Nasik, and Ahmedabad.

An analysis on those phishing mails revealed that they had originated from somewhere in Lagos, Nigeria. The UTI phishing site had lifted the UTI logo as well as the Iconnect symbol from the original UTI site in order to make the fake site look real. The fake site provided a 'click here' option, which in turn took victims to a fake customer verification site based in Austria. IP addresses of the fraudulent transactions indicated transactions had been made from Nigeria, Atlanta and California.

Investigations
Upon a complaint of the vice president, UTI Bank, a case (FIR No 431/06 u.s 420/120-B IPC r/w 66 IT Act was) registered and taken up for investigation by a special team. Investigations revealed that Sanjit Chowdhary, Account No 111010100023959 with UTI Bank, Noida, had received a disputed credit entry totaling Rs. 1.3 lakh through Internet banking from the account of Lakshmi Narayan Sarkar of Kolkata, who has an account at UTI Bank, Salt Lake, Kolkota, and from the account of Makaran H Pundalik, who has an account with the Standard Chartered Bank, Delhi.

It was further revealed that the misappropriated funds had been transferred in the account of accused Sanjit Chowdhary. With the defrauded amount yet to be withdrawn, it was likely that the alleged person might visit the bank for the same. The police team laid a trap at UTI Bank in Noida and the accused Sanjit Chowdhary, who came to the branch to make enquiries regarding the inactive status of his account, was arrested on December 7, 2006.

On being interrogated, the accused disclosed that he had received money in his bank account consequent to phishing mails sent to various customers of UTI Bank. Various transaction slips pertaining to the UTI Bank and ICICI Bank were recovered from his possession. A scrutiny of these slips revealed that Sanjit Chowdhary had withdrawn funds and deposited the same in accounts of his other associates, who had accounts in UTI and ICICI Bank at Mumbai and Trichy.

Till December 2006, a total of twenty complainants had registered their complaints. All the six beneficiary accounts (UTI branches at Saket, GK, Noida, Vikaspuri, Defence Colony and Lajpat Nagar) are in Delhi for these twenty complainants. Further, ten complaints had been received by UTI branches in Vishakapatnam, Ahmedabad, Nasik, and Thane, where the beneficiary accounts are being maintained. An analysis of the accounts of the four arrested Nigerian nationals revealed that financial transactions worth over Rs. 1 crore took place in an eight-month period.

Till December 2006, four Nigerian nationals and one Indian national have been arrested. Investigations revealed that the scam was multi-layered with pan-India and International spread.

Source: Dataquest