Aadhaar fingerprints used to siphon off bank money in Gujarat's Dahod

VADODARA: Think twice before using fingerprint impressions for any financial transaction. You may end up losing your bank savings. Police have busted a cyber fraud wherein two persons used fingerprint impressions to withdraw money from victims’ bank accounts.
The duo managed to gather fingerprints of nearly 1,000 persons in Dahod and used a few to siphon money from their accounts. “Not many know they can withdraw money from their bank account using their fingerprints and identity card without OTP authentication. The duo took advantage of the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System to defraud some people and withdrew money from their bank accounts,” said B N Patel, police inspector, cybercrime.
The accused, Sanjiv Baria, a BTech student and Satish Bhabhor, both residents of Dahod, were arrested by the cybercrime sleuths. Bhabhor runs a fair-price shop in Garbada taluka of Dahod and had thousands of fingerprints of locals who used them to get their monthly grocery supply. “Bhabhor knew that money could be withdrawn from the bank account using AEPS. So, he took the help of Baria who is studying B-Tech in Gandhinagar. Baria came up with a trick to clone fingerprint impressions of the victims and use them to withdraw money from their bank accounts,” Patel told TOI.
Accused registered as a merchant
One of the key accused in the cyber-fraud registered himself as a merchant to facilitate availability of cash to the villagers in Dahod. The police said he stored the data including, Aadhaar card details and fingerprints of the locals, for a few months and then decided to execute the scam.
"Satish Bhabhor, who runs a fair-price shop in Dahod, first got himself registered as a merchant by using one of his customers' fingerprints and Aadhaar details. He offered to help the villagers by providing them cash whenever they needed it," said a police official.
"Many people staying in villages are not very tech-savvy when it comes to net banking, especially if they are not educated. Such locals used to take help from Bhabhor for withdrawing cash from their account. Bhabhor used to take their fingerprints and transfer money from their bank accounts to his," the police added.
He then used to hand them over the exact amount of cash. Some months ago, Bhabhor came up with the idea of duping his customers. He already had their fingerprint impressions and Aadhaar data. He took the help of Baria, who was well-versed with computers and software.
"Bhabhor brought a biometric fingerprint scanner and removed the glass that used to take the thumb impression. He took images of victims' fingerprints on his mobile phone. Baria guided him in committing this fraud," said B N Patel, Vadodara cybercrime police inspector.
He kept the phone screen with the image of the victims' thumb impression on the scanner and entered the Aadhaar details of the victims to transfer the money from their bank accounts to an account that he had opened. Interestingly, the bank account he opened to siphon off the money too was created by using the fingerprints and Aadhaar details of one of the victims.
Once the money was transferred into his newly created account, he used to withdraw it. The scam came to light when a victim learned that nearly Rs 1 lakh was siphoned off from his bank account following which he approached the police.