The officers of the Computer Crime Division of the Criminal Investigation Department were able to reveal information about a massive fraud done by hacking the electricity board’s website and changing the online payment data and the mastermind behind this racket was arrested yesterday.
This fraud has been done by him taking money from business establishments stating that he will give a 25% discount when paying large electricity bills in business places, including hotels, through him, and changing the information system to display that the bill has been paid and depositing that money to his account.
Investigations have revealed that in a period of about three months between September 18 and November 25, a fraud of around Rs. 100 million has been committed by changing the data of about 400 bills.
The information about this scam was revealed for the first time when the electricity board’s account department noticed a difference between the payments in the data system and the money credited to the bank.
The Computer Crime Investigation Division of the Criminal Investigation Department received a complaint from the Electricity Board about this on November 28. The Electricity Board has also submitted a list of about 400 bills related to questionable payments to the Criminal Investigation Department. A payment of Rs. 15 million was also recorded there. Investigations have revealed that the suspect, who is not very old, self-learned hacking from websites on the internet and engaged in this activity.
By going to business places, including hotels that pay a large amount of electricity bills and paying the electricity bill online, the suspect entered the data system and recorded the electricity bill of those business places as a bill that was paid. Then he asked the businessmen to pay the remaining electricity bill after the 25% discount and deposited that amount into his account.
Information from the Computer Crime Investigation Division of the Criminal Investigation Department stated that further investigations are going on in this regard.
