Two held for duping bizman of Rs19 lakh

The crime branch arrested two people on Monday in a cyber fraud case wherein a businessman was duped to the tune of Rs19 lakh. The duo was on the run for the past four years, the police said.

The two have been identified as Jignesh Rathod and Aabil Sayyed.

According to the police, the complainant in the case is Byculla resident Yusuf Siddhpurwala, who runs a shop on Dhanji Street. Siddhpurwala had opened an account for his business in a government bank and had also activated mobile alerts for transactions.

"On July 30, 2012, Siddhpurwala received an email from an address similar to that of the bank's. The email, which had a form attached, asked for his bank account details for updating their data," said a police officer.

He added that the email also stated that if the recipient failed to fill the form, his account would be deactivated. "Siddhpurwala then shared all his bank account details, including password and ATM PIN. On August 4, he received a message from the bank stating eight transactions totalling Rs19 lakh were done from his account."

The victim then lodged a complaint with the Cyber Crime Cell. "Probe revealed that the beneficiary accounts were opened using bogus documents and the account holders had gone into hiding. On March 20, 2015, the case was handed over to the crime branch," the officer said.

"It transpired that Rathod, along with his accomplices, had allegedly gotten details of the victim's bank account and had transferred Rs19 lakh to various accounts through RTGS. He had a similar cheating case registered against him with the EOW," said the officer.