Yogesh K Porwar
Posing as representative of a city based real estate firm, cyber con duped staff of the state bank of India and made away with Rs.38.2 lakh on last Wednesday .
Based on the complaint,by Chief Maneger state bank of India,the East Division Cyber Crime Police on Monday,registered an FIR charging the accused under various section of IT act and impersonation under BNS for further investigation.
According to the complaint,the SBI,Banaswadi branch, having Adithi Developers,a city based real estate developer,RERA escrow account,as their customer since July this year,with a provision that the purchaser of the apartment in the project will deposit their consideration and all vendor payment will be done through this account.
All deposits and withdrawals are strictly regulated under statutory guidelines to ensure transparency and safeguard the interests of homebuyers and investors.
As per the procedure for facilitating the account,the staff on every transaction receive written mandate or instructions electronically from the authorized representatives Adithi Developers,then on cross verification if confirmed telephonically with their representatives for authenticity, then only transfer of funds will be done .
Over the course of operations,the branch has been processing genuine payment instructions for project-related disbursements,vendor settlements,
and other legitimate expenses of the developer.
These requests have consistently originated from the registered official e-mail ID,and no discrepancy had been observed prior to the present fraudulent incident.
The account has been in regular operation without any adverse remarks and the customer has maintained a healthy relationship with our branch.
Given the regulatory nature of RERA accounts, the bank exercises heightened scrutiny and due diligence in handling all transactions.
However on last Wednesday at around 11:01 am, the branch has received a telephone call identifying as authorized person of Adithi Developers,by referring an e-mail request for transfers of funds and insisted that the payments be processed urgently to meet the project requirement .
As the payment instructions was received through an e-mail sent from (adithideveloper@gmail.com) authorised email account,RTGS transfer for an amount of ₹ 38.2 lakh was made to the beneficiaries.
Since similar instructions had previously been received from the said registered e-mail ID and duly executed for authorised project-related disbursements, the complainant,said .
The fraud came to light the next day when the authorized representative of Adithi Developers contacted our branch and categorically denied having initiated or authorized the above transactions, but by then time the funds had already been transmitted through the RTGS system.
They confirmed that no such instructions were issued by them through their official e-mail ID, nor did they make any telephonic request in this regard.
Upon further scrutiny of the e-mail header details it was discovered that the fraudulent instructions had been sent from an unauthorised and spoofed e-mail account deliberately designed to resemble the genuine ID, thereby misleading both the branch and the customer.
The staff raided online complaint through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal before approaching the police for help.
The police are now trying to track down the accused through the money transactions.
