Bengaluru police unearths Rs 12 crore fraud involving bank employee | News from Bengaluru

Bengaluru: In a shocking case of cybercrime and financial fraud, the Bengaluru police have arrested four people, including an Axis Bank relationship manager, for allegedly taking over Rs 12 crore from city-based Dreamplug Paytech Solutions Private Limited, which operates Cred — a rewards-enabled payment platform for credit card bills.

Those arrested are Vaibhav Pithadiya (Axis Bank relationship manager in Rajkot), Parmar Neha Ben Vipulbhai (bank agent and resident of Surat), Shailesh (Rajkot-based insurance agent and colleague of Vaibhav) and Shubham (Rajkot-based commission agent). The arrests were made by the CEN East police following a complaint by the company’s director, Narasimha Vasanth Sastry.
The scam was discovered on November 12 when Dreamplug executives discovered suspicious transactions in the company’s accounts. The firm, an online payments aggregator with offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, found that Rs 12.2 crore had been fraudulently withdrawn from its two Axis Bank accounts – the current account and a nodal account – opened in 2021. Axis Bank issued one corporate ID and four user IDs, only two of which were activated by the company; the other two remained unused.
The investigation revealed a sophisticated modus operandi: the culprits were able to gain unauthorized access to Dreamplug’s bank accounts by manipulating the account details with Axis Bank. They exploited two key vulnerabilities: first, by sending fake documents – including fake signatures, seals and board resolutions – and second, by requesting to change the registered mobile phone number and email ID -mail related to accounts. As many as 37 trades took place over 14 days from October 29 to November 11. Initially, an attempt was made to transfer an amount greater than 15.2 million lei, but only 12.2 million lei were transferred.
The first request to change details was made on July 22 this year at an Axis Bank branch in Ankleshwar, Gujarat, and the second was on October 12 at another branch in Abrama, Surat. Both requests, flagged by suspicious personal email IDs, should have raised red flags as Dreamplug’s operations are based in Bengaluru.
Despite this, Axis Bank processed the changes, allowing fraudsters to intercept OTPs sent to the new contact details and initiate transfers to accounts across the country, company executives told police. The e-mails and mobile numbers used for the fraudulent transactions were: [email protected], [email protected], 9662369909 and 8469158856. The accused used this access to initiate fraudulent transactions by draining funds into various accounts.