Lucknow (UP): A few alert employees of the UP Cooperative Bank Ltd, Hazratganj branch, Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, have foiled an attempt of a group of cyber frauds to appropriate Rs 146 crore, the police said on Wednesday.
According to reports, the managing director of the bank lodged a complaint at the state police cyber cell, saying two former employees of the bank were reportedly involved in the incident.
After lodging the complaint, he suspended ten employees, including manager of the bank’s Hazratganj branch, a cashier and a guard, besides two retired employees of the bank RS Dubey and GS Chauhan were detained. The bank management also sought an inquiry by the I-T Department. According to the preliminary investigation, the hackers laid their hands on the security system of the Hazratganj branch of the bank and attempted to filch the money.
The incident came to light when a few officials of the branch came across an online debit of Rs 146 crore from the branch’s account to seven accounts of different other banks. No sooner had they detected the case than they blocked funds transferred to different banks. Then, they contacted the higher authorities who cancelled all the transactions. A former employee of the bank, whose role is under scrutiny, came to the bank with an unidentified person and hacked the system. Sources in the bank further said that the IDs of two employees of the cooperative bank had been used to shift crores of rupees only. According to superintendent of police (cyber cell) Triveni Singh, experts will do a forensic audit of the computers which were used to transfer the money. He further said that how all the systems with individual password were hacked is under investigation.
The suspended employees include general manager Ashok Kumar, general manager (finance) KD Pathak, deputy general manager Rajnath Singh, assistant general manager Vivek Singh, Dhruv Raj Singh, manager Mewalal, assistant manager Ajay Kumar, assistant Ajay, cashier Vikas Kumar Pandey and guard Vijay Bahadur Maurya.
General of the bank VK Mishra said that some unidentified persons breached the online security system and transferred Rs 72 crore from the official account of the bank on October 15. Another attempt was made to transfer Rs 74 crore from the same account. The alert staff have, however, foiled both the attempts, and the money is safe, Mishra said.
Deputy inspector general of cyber crime cell N Kilanachi said that it was a big surprise that the criminals had been acquainted with the password of the bank’s account. A probe into whether the system had been hacked or the pass compromised was going on, he said.
