A police team from here arrested two Nigerian nationals from Delhi for cyber-looting Manjeri Cooperative Urban Bank by hacking the bank’s server. The cyber fraudsters reportedly stole ₹70 lakh from four accounts of the bank.
The police team investigating the fraud arrested Immaculate Chinaza and Ikenna Cosmos in Delhi after staying there and closely observing the duo for about two weeks. The police said that they suspected the fraud was much more than ₹70 lakh.
Modus operandi
The Nigerian duo reportedly zeroed in on four accounts that had not been digitally active. After hacking the server, the fraudsters raised the daily withdrawal limit of the four accounts and linked the accounts with fake mobile connections for alerts and one-time-passwords (OTPs).
Sources said that the funds were siphoned off to 19 other bank accounts with fake addresses in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Mizoram. The police zeroed in on the Nigerian fraudsters by tracing the fake phone numbers that they used for cyber-looting the funds.
The police said the funds were stolen through ATMs in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi. Sources said that a good chunk of the loot had been transferred to accounts in Nigeria.
The police said that there were intermediaries in the fraud, and the Nigerian duo reportedly admitted offering funds for their help.
Inside help
However, the police said they were investigating the role of the private IT companies that managed the server. “We can’t say anything now. But we ought to suspect that the duo might have got some help from within to hack such a high-security server,” said a senior police officer on condition of anonymity.
The police said that they would bring the Nigerian duo to Malappuram for verification. They would investigate if the duo had any role in similar online frauds conducted by Nigerian nationals.
Many cyber financial frauds involving Nigerian nationals were reported in recent years in the country. Some influential people, including a doctor and a judge, from Kerala had become victims of the online financial fraud by Nigerians.
