Ahmedabad: 31,000 euros recovered from fraudsters’ bank account

AHMEDABAD: Nothing is impossible. That is what the cyber cell of the city police proved on Thursday by recovering 31,000 euros (Rs 25 lakh) from foreign bank accounts in which cyber cheats had made him deposit the money by hacking his customer’s email account and putting in wrong bank details. Cyber cell officials said the amount was deposited back into the victim’s account on March 1.

This is the second instance in which the city cyber cell has recovered money cheated by online fraudsters.”We have have recovered Rs 60 lakh from a foreign bank which was siphoned off by cyber cheats about eight months ago,” said a cyber cell official. DCP, cyber cell, Rajdeepsinh Jhala said many believe that once the online fraudsters cheat their money, there’s no hope of getting the money back.

“However, we have proved that the money can not only be brought back from Indian banks but also from banks located in foreign countries. In this case, we approached Barclays Bank in UK, Commerz Bank in Germany and Banco Gandero of South America to recover the amount,” said DCP Jhala.

Inspector V B Barad of cyber cell said that on January 30, Durgaprasad Jain who works as general manager in a textile unit dealing in export of textile material, had contacted Italian company Lafer Spa’s Indian agent Dhaval Gandhi to get his services. Later on, Gandhi from his official mail id had mailed the textile unit on January 31, the invoice of 31,000 euros and bank account details in which the money was to be deposited, Barad said.

“Interestingly the textile unit received another mail the next day. This time, Gandhi’s mail ID was hacked, and details of a different bank were put in. Jain fell into the trap and deposited the money in Banco Gandero, branch office, schio (VI) in Italy through Telegraphic Transfer (TT) from his account,” said inspector Barad.

Cyber cell sources said Jain came to know about the fraud when Gandhi told him that he had not received the payment.