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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Cyber crime racket busted - centralchronicle.com - 24 Aug 09

With the arrest of one Nigerian youth and his Indian-origin wife, Madhya Pradesh's Cyber Crime branch claimed to have busted an international racket involved in economic crimes.

Inspector General of Police (Cyber) RK Mishra told reporters here today that five mobile phones, a pen drive and other documents were seized from their house in New Delhi. A Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) on the mobile revealed that the racket had links with the US and the UK.

Mishra said the matter came to light when one Manish Saxena from Lucknow called him and informed that Bhopal-based Monalisa Pandey had hacked Rs 1.90 lakh from his account.

When Ms Pandey was interrogated, it was revealed that she was duped by someone while chatting on Internet on the promise of providing a job. She had complained about the matter to Habibganj police station. Ms Pandey had registered with naukri.com for job. She received a job offer from Action and Foundation's Elena Numan.

Under the job profile, Ms Pandey was supposed to withdraw money to be transferred in her account and deposit it in other accounts. She would receive five per cent commission for it.

She was advised to open a bank account in either HDFC Bank or Axis Bank with a limit of Rs 50,000. She opened an account with Rs 25,000 in HDFC bank here. Later, Rs 1.90 lakh was deposited in her account. Ms Pandey was asked to deduct Rs 10,000 as her commission and deposit the rest amount in six bank accounts. However, she was unable to access her account due to a technical glitch. At this, she deposited Rs 1.80 lakh in the six bank accounts with her money.

Ms Pandey went to withdraw money again later but she was informed that her account had been blocked as Manish Saxena had lodged a police complaint in Hazratganj police station in Lucknow that she had withdrawn Rs 1.90 lakh from his account through Internet banking.

Mishra said investigation revealed that a Nigeria-based man had hacked Saxena's account and transferred Rs 1.90 lakh to Ms Pandey's account. A case was registered against unidentified persons on November 22 last year.

Following three-month long investigation, it was revealed that Onekachi Odewa alias Emma used to send emails to Ms Pandey. By the time police reached to nab him in New Delhi, he had escaped.

Later, police came to know about Emma and his wife and arrested them. New Delhi's Patiala House Court handed Emma to Cyber Crime Branch on transit remand. However, his wife was granted bail as she was pregnant.

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