Hyderabad: Gang clones fingerprints to hack accounts through Aadhaar-based pay

HYDERABAD: A gang of seven who cloned fingerprints to spoof biometrics and hack bank accounts through Aadhar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) was busted by Cyberabad police. The accused, who were nabbed last month, siphoned off funds from accounts of hundreds of villages who parked their hard-earned money in a AEPS-driven mini-banking facility.
The arrests followed a complaint by a representative of Epoint India, a city-based franchise of a fintech firm, Roinet Solution, that provides services to rural clients. Epoint India’s role was to appoint business agents to provide mini banking services through AEPS.
The accused included N Venkateshwarlu and R Srinivas of Sangareddy district, Shanker Naik, D Samelu, Sk Khasim Vali, Anil Kumar of AP’s Prakasham district and Ch Manikanta of Guntur.
On May 4, key accused Venkateshwarlu contacted Epoint India representative and obtained an AEPS licence to provide mini-banking services after forging KYC verification. A week later, Epoint India received an alert from Roinet Solution about fraudulent withdrawals of ₹14.64lakh from 149 bank accounts of rural account holders. The accused had transferred funds to nine bank accounts after cloning fingerprints.
After Epoint India’s complaint, police zeroed in on the seven accused and nabbed them from the Sangareddy home of the kingpin, Venkateshwarlu, who was earlier a DTP operator at Kurnool collectorate and was well versed in land registration, rural banking services and knew about vulnerabilities of the IGRS portal of Andhra Pradesh.
“Venkateshwarlu downloaded land registration documents from IGRS portal of AP and collected names, Aadhaar numbers and fingerprints of over 10,000 people,” Cyberabad commissioner M Stephen Raveendra said. Police suspect the gang might have withdrawn more money and they are trying to collate details.
The gang scanned documents and enhanced its quality through photoshop. “They cloned fingerprints on butter paper by using a polymer sheet and heating it to certain temperature with a chemical,” said DCP Kalmeshvar Shingenavar.
The accused would then withdraw money from bank accounts through EPoint India app by using polymer fingerprints, Aadhar card number and linking banking details of a rural client. The funds would then be transferred to bank accounts, created with fake documents.
Police seized 2,500 cloned fingerprints, ₹3.4lakh in cash, 121 SIM cards, 20 cell phones, four finger print scanners, 13 debit cards and other incriminating documents from the accused.