The two persons had accessed the keyboard usage of the bank and monitored the texts through a phishing mail named Keylogger, following which they swindled the money.
Two Nigerian nationals have been arrested by the Cyber Crime Wing of Greater Chennai Police for allegedly swindling nearly Rs 2.5 crores from the Tamilnadu State Apex Cooperative Bank. According to reports, the two persons had accessed the keyboard usage of the bank and monitored texts through a phishing mail named Keylogger, following which they swindled the money.
The duo, in November 2022, had sent a phishing email with the keylogger software and when it got installed in a system in the bank, they were able to access the credentials of the bank account, as well as the passwords. Keylogger is a surveillance software that is used to monitor and record each keystroke on a specific computer.
According to a report by The Hindu, the bank lodged a complaint last November stating that nearly Rs 2. 5 crores had been swindled from its accounts. An investigation was launched into it by the Cyber Crime Wing and all transactions and call records of the bank were analysed. “In one of the transactions, we found the money was withdrawn from an ATM in Uttam Nagar and traced the accused who withdrew the money,” police personnel had told The Hindu.
Following this, a special team of police was sent to Delhi and they arrested Ekene Gowin (37) and Augustine Chakwedo (42), two Nigerian nationals. They were brought to Chennai after being produced before a Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Dwaraka. The police also said that the duo had been monitoring many other cooperative banks through phishing emails since August 2022.
While the cybercrime police had retrieved Rs 1.5 crores from 32 bank accounts, the remaining Rs 1 crore has already been transferred to two Nigeria-based banks. A Times of India report stated that a portion of the money was to be invested in cryptocurrency and the remaining was kept to meet their other expenses.
Source: The News Minute