Pramesh S Jain & Dr.Thomas (Special Correspondent)
I
n a significant development, the SIT team of CID officials on Wednesday arrested former Bengaluru crime branch police officer and a private cyber expert in the probe for transferring bitcoins worth Rs.1.8 lakh to their personal accounts while probing the case against the hacker and kingpin of the scam,Sriki.
Inspector Prashanth Babu was among the five police officials involved in stealing the bitcoins from Sriki while probing the case during their tenure in CCB and also in technical cell case.
The accused had arrested a drug peddler Sujay in connection with purchasing drug through darknet and later arrested hacker Sriki who helped the drug deal through bitcoin.
During the course of investigations,they found that the accused had hacked into many online gaming sites and also government sites to steal money worth crores .
The accused reopened in a private IT firm to decode the online transactions from the Srikis electronic gadgets seized and used the IT firms employees to transfer the stolen bitcoins and misused .
The accused Inspector Prashanth Babu had purchased a new laptop for the crime and roped in Santosh,owner of the It firm to transfer bitcoins to their accounts.
The SIT teams produced Prashanth and Santosh before the court and taken into custody while investigations continue to ascertain the role of other four police officials and other private parties who are involved in the racket .
