Suspects transfer ₹35 lakh by breaching payment gateway of private firm

Gurugram: Unidentified suspects have been booked for allegedly transferring ₹35 lakh from the bank account of a private firm after breaching the security layers of the software used for making transactions, Gurugram police said on Sunday.

Police said officials of the firm that works on vehicle parking automation solutions and is also into manufacturing car cleaning accessories, had alleged that the suspects had breached their payment gateway to make the transactions. Police added that none of the suspects have been traced yet.

Investigators said the Delhi registered office manages its countrywide financial operations from another office at Unitech Cyberpark in Sector 81.

As per police, the money was transferred into different bank accounts using at least five UPI addresses. They said that the transactions started taking place at about 4.44am on March 3 and ended at 11.40pm on the same day.

Investigators said the fraudsters made 35 transactions valued at ₹1 lakh each using the UPI addresses.

Police said the firm discovered these fraudulent transactions during an internal audit after almost three weeks.

Inspector Jasvir Singh, station house officer (SHO) of the Cyber Crime (East) police station, said they have contacted the Bengaluru-based financial firm whose payment gateway service was being used by the Delhi-based company for making their transactions. “Once the financial firm provides technical details about the 35 transactions, it will become clear if someone from outside had hacked into the firm’s dashboard to make these transactions,” he said.

The SHO said that in such scenarios, most of the time it comes to light after investigation that a former or serving employee is involved in the crime.

“However, in this case, things could be ascertained only after we receive details from the Bengaluru firm which is expected to share a detailed report on the transactions in the next few days,” SHO Singh added.

On the complaint of Ankit Rawat, the firm’s national head of operations, an FIR against unidentified suspects was registered under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), section 66 (computer-related offence) and 66D (cheating by personation using communication device or computer resource) of the Information Technology (IT) Act at the Cyber Crime (East) police station on Saturday, said police.

HT contacted Rawat but he did not wish to comment on the matter.