IT engineer hacks into bourse, steals ₹42 lakh, arrested

The Maharashtra Cyber police’s nodal police station arrested an IT engineer on Tuesday for allegedly hacking into the payment gateway system of a bourse and siphoning off ₹42 lakh since 2017. Police said the cheating had gone on undetected as the accused siphoned off small amounts of money at a time.

The accused, identified as Vignesh Kannan, 28, is a resident of Chennai and works at an IT company. However, Kannan wanted to make some money on the side and allegedly used to hack into the account of the bourse, a globally recognised clearing corporation.

Kannan had started trading through the bourse in 2016, police said.

“Kannan used to buy mutual fund units worth ₹1 lakh but paid the stock market just ₹10,000 by hacking into its payment gateway and using a data manipulator software to change the figures. As the amounts were small it escaped scrutiny. Due to Kannan’s technical background, committing such a crime was easy for him,” said a cyber police officer.

After these irregularities were noticed by the officials of the bourse they approached the Maharashtra cyber police earlier this year and lodged a complaint.

Dr Balsingh Rajput, Maharashtra SP, cyber, said, “To ensure he does not get caught, he used to made several small transactions and siphoned off small amounts. He used anti-forensic methods to cover his trail but we managed to track him down.”