Bengaluru Entrepreneur’s Airtel SIM Hacked To Rob Rs 45 Lakh In 30 Minutes: This Is How This Fraud Happened

An engineering company has been robbed off of Rs. 45.7 lakhs from its bank accounts by fraudsters, who deactivated the Airtel sim card of the victim and stole all the credentials of the victim’s phone number. 

What is more shocking is that their complaint was registered at the cyber fraud complaint station after a delay of 24 hours. Moreover, Airtel has also denied taking any responsibility for the fraud. 

Find out what went down right here!

Airtel SIM Hacked To Rob Rs 45 Lakh In 30 Minutes

The victim in the newest case of online fraud is TV Jagadeesh, who runs a firm called Creative Engineers which manufactures mineral-processing and slurry-pumping machinery at Hegganahalli. 

The victim said that he found that his sim card, of Airtel, wasn’t working, after which he contacted the customer care service from a different sim card to get the issue resolved. He was told to get a new sim card, but as it was a corporate sim, an official letter was needed. 

After this, his wife, Mangala tried to access the firm’s bank account when she found out that the bank accounts’ password and username were changed. Assuming that her husband changed the credentials, she got in touch with him, but found out that there was no change made. 

The couple promptly contacted the bank, on which they were told that Rs. 45.7 lakhs were transferred from their overdraft and current accounts from Canara Bank in five branches within 30 minutes.

Airtel Says Not Their Fault

After a 24 hour delay and a shuttle between two police stations, the police finally registered his complaint. As per the police officials, the fraudsters must have deactivated Jagadeesh’s sim card after hacking his email account and generating a replacement request for the password and username. The fraudsters then got a replacement sim from Airtel.

Jagadeesh said, “It’s shocking how Airtel issued a corporate sim card without papers. It was issued without my knowledge and consent.” 

A spokesperson from Airtel denied responsibility and said that they issued a new sim card only after they got an email from Jagadeesh on Saturday. They ascertained that they haven’t handed out the card illegally. He said, “There was no lapse on our part.”

The police have registered a case under IPC section 420 (cheating by personation by using computer resource) and are investigating if the email account was hacked or if there was any insider rile.