Cops trace suspect to Mumbai, say incidents of phishing on the rise
Cops trace suspect to Mumbai, say incidents of phishing on the rise
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Asha Kiran Kotta, a software engineer working in the US, lost Rs 30,000 when she replied to an e-mail claiming to be from her bank and which asked her to furnish details of her account for purposes of a service upgrade.
The cyber crime cell of the police is investigating the role of a person so far known only as Chandrashekhar, a resident of Powai in Mumbai who allegedly transferred the Rs 30,000 from Kotta's account to his. Known as phishing, such fraudulent online transactions are on the rise with the cyber crime cell suddenly finding a lot of such cases on its hands from hardly any till some time ago. "The cyber crime cell was formed four years ago, but till a few months back, we never encountered any phishing cases," said a senior police officer, who did not want to be named. "Now, we receive at least two cases per week on an average."
The incident
On October 21, Kotta, who is currently based in Colorado, US, received the mail, ostensibly from ICICI Bank, where she had an account. She replied to the mail the same day.
Two days later, she received a mobile phone text message alert that Rs 30,000 had been withdrawn from her account.
Since she had not authorised any withdrawal, she immediately informed her brother Krishnakanth Reddy in Bangalore about the message. Reddy alerted the CMH Road branch of ICICI Bank and filed a complaint there.u00a0
The bank officials found Kotta had fallen prey to a phishing mail and asked Reddy to file a police complaint.
Be aware
"We have requested banks to send warning SMSes about phishing mails to all their account holders," said the police official. "People should realise that banks never ask for account details. They should also not get greedy and reply to mails about lucrative offers."
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