How fraudsters duped a Mumbai school of Rs 87 lakh by changing ‘U’ to ‘V’ in email, police recovers money

Even as the company and school were communicating with each other, cyber fraudsters accessed their conversation trail and created an email ID — arul@evrosystems.com — resembling the company’s account, arul@eurosystems.com by replacing “u” with “v”. The fraudsters then emailed the school, asking to deposit the amount into an account at Wells Fargo Bank, USA, the officer said.

The school management credited Rs 87,26,000 to the fraudulent account from its account in Axis Bank on March 16, assuming it was the company’s account. When the actual company mailed them with details, the school management said that they had already transferred the money.

The school management later discovered the difference in the two e-mail addresses in addition to other CC emails where abhay@eurosystems was made abha.y@eurosystems. They realised that they had been cheated and were victims of a Man-in-the-Middle attack. An offence was registered at the Central Cyber Police Station.

A team immediately contacted the banks and all intermediaries and an amount of Rs 82,55,000 was frozen. “Because of the timely intervention, we were able to save the money and return it to the school,” said DCP Datta Nalawade.

The officer added that either the computer systems of the school or the UAE-based company was compromised due to which the fraudsters could access their conversation.