Ticketing company targeted, 173 fraudulent transactions in 24 hours

Suspecting something amiss, the complainant informed other colleagues, including those working with the payment wallet linked to the website where the money should have been deposited. The complainant also got a statement of all transactions for booking flight tickets that took place on the same day. “It came to light that that it was not the only fraudulent transaction. A total of 164 transactions had taken place using the company’s online portal to book air tickets worth Rs 25.39 lakh while the company got only Rs 1 per transaction,” an officer said. In addition to air tickets, the company also provides bus tickets and hotel booking, among other services. The employees found that four fraudulent transactions worth Rs 7.35 lakh to book hotel rooms and five transactions worth Rs 22,881 to book bus tickets had also taken place. It later came to light that someone had rigged the system to carry out transactions on the website, an officer said. The way the payment system worked was that a ticket was allowed to be booked by the portal after the wallet linked to the website confirmed that it had received payment for the ticket.

The fraudsters who rigged the system of the company hacked the website and reduced the confirmation value to Rs 1 instead of the price of the ticket. “This meant that the website allowed a ticket to be booked since the wallet would say payment was received after making a payment of Rs 1. Hence, so many fraudulent transactions were approved by the system though actual payment had not been received,” the officer said.

Senior Inspector Avinash Kanade of Pydhonie police station said, “We have registered an FIR in the case and investigations are on in the matter.”