Andheri firm duped of Rs 1.33 cr in MIM cyber fraud

The accused cyber fraudster hacked email accounts of two senior executives of the complainant company. Posing as them, the fraudsters tricked an Egypt-based Canadian client to make a payment for an order into another bank account.

The police registered an FIR against an unknown person and commenced investigations.

As per the police complaint, Between December 6 and 12, 2024, an unknown person hacked the official emails of Mangala Kamat, senior export manager in the export department and Angad Singh, business development manager (sales export) at the complainant company’s headquarters in Andheri, and created a similar fake email account.

“After this the fraudster posing as the company’s executives contacted one of the clients, an Egypt-based Canadian company, and sent them an email requesting them to update the new bank account details in their records and send payment for an order to the same bank account,” the police complaint stated. The fraudster also fabricated the email IDs using the complainant company’s letterhead, created fake bills on it and also made duplicate signatures of company officials on them and sent it to the client company, the complaint added.

The fraudsters successfully tricked the Canadian client into making a payment of $153600 (equivalent to Rs 1,33,07,904 in Indian currency), the police said.

Later, when the complainant company discovered the fraud, they conducted an internal inquiry and found that their executives’ email accounts were compromised. After contacting the bank, they realised how fraudsters used duplicate letterheads and managed to get their client to transfer money into another bank account.

On Friday they lodged a criminal complaint in the matter. The police have registered a case under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Information Technology Act for cheating, forgery, cheating by impersonation, hacking, etc.

The police have written to the concerned bank and email service provider seeking details of the fraudulent transactions and duplicate email accounts created to commit the offence, said a police officer.