Orkut-aided credit card fraud busted

HYDERABAD, INDIA: A new case of credit card fraud has surfaced in Hyderabad with social networking sites playing a vital part in the crime.

The group stealing credit card numbers created communities on Orkut announcing heavily discounted flight tickets.

The discounts were offered to travel agents with about 30-40 per cent commission. But tickets bought were double paid first through the stolen credit card and secondly through the actual passenger.

Hyderabad’s Central Crime Station (CCS) has arrested one person from Vishakapatnam following a complaint from Hyderabad.

“The gang has a database of stolen credit card numbers. We were intimated by a person who got an SMS alert from his bank on usage of his credit card to book destinations that he never traveled,” said J Anyonya, investigating officer of the case at Central Crime Station.

The communities created at Orkut were under several pseudonyms changed at regular intervals.

“The person using these Orkut communities used laptops with data cards. Changing locations of the URL has confirmed this,” said Anyonya.

To gain confidence of small time agents, payments were collected at a different account number after the passenger reached the destination.

The CCS took the help of the cyber crime cell in Hyderabad and is on the look out for other key persons such as the one caught in Vishakapatanam.

Cyber crime on rise

The revelation however, is not even the tip of the iceberg. “Most cyber crime case go unreported as people either go back to banks and are simply too fed up to explain this crime to police who more often than not has no idea how this theft works,” said Zaki Qureshey, founder and CEO E2-Labs, an Ethical Hacking school in Hyderabad.

Cyber crimes especially involving credit cards are on the rise and spare no one including the who’s who of tinsel town. It is the financial institution through which such crimes come out in the open, but a lot from frivolous to very serious ones go unnoticed say experts.

“We don't have laws to govern networking sites such Orkut. The headquarters of this is outside the country thus not under the purview of Indian government. India is very different from countries, which have mature cyber laws. In our situation social networking should not be allowed at all,” said Qureshey.

Increasing the number of cyber crime cells in the city and educating the police about technology and inclusion of other civil and technical experts in the process will help in resolving such crimes better, he added.