Ahmedabad man busted hacking cyber police email to unfreeze bank accounts

An Ahmedabad-based IT expert, who also formerly assisted the police, hacked the official email ID of the Junagadh Range Cyber Police and sent emails to banks to unfreeze funds that had been previously frozen. However, due to the email being sent with a blank subject line, the bank responded to the cyber police to confirm the communication.

According to reports, on May 3, officers of the Junagadh Cyber Police Station including Police Sub Inspectors (PSI) MA Joshi and VM Jotaniya were on duty when they received a forwarded email from ICICI Bank on their official cybercrime email account. 

The sender was named  GB Sisodiya, a PSI from the Junagadh Cyber Crime Police Station. However, when the staff verified, no such email had actually been sent by anyone from their team. Upon technical inspection, the email revealed that it referenced a bank account under the name ‘Balaji E-Commerce’ and mentioned that ₹20.44 lakh were to be transferred to ‘Anmol E-Cards and Utility Services’.

Additionally, emails were also sent to—

-SBI, regarding ₹30.92 lakh under ‘SKL Online Service OPC Pvt Ltd’

-Bank of Baroda regarding ₹7.40 lakh under ‘Shyam Online Service’

-Punjab National Bank regarding ₹14.95 lakh under ‘Ganesh Online Service’

These emails falsely listed the sender as PSI GB Sisodiya. However, no such officer exists at the Junagadh Range Cyber Police Station. As a result, the police alerted bank officials not to act on any such instructions.

Email account of cyber police hacked

Investigations led by Cyber PI CV Nayak and his team revealed that the government email ID had been hacked, and someone had accessed the password. Tracing the IP address used to send the emails led them to one Vishal Vanand from Ahmedabad. Upon arrest and interrogation, Vanand admitted to sending the emails to get the frozen funds released.

Sources in the police department disclosed that Vishal is an IT professional and has previously assisted police in cybercrime investigations. He claimed to assist the Ranip Police Station in Ahmedabad with cyber-related crimes. Investigations are still ongoing to determine whether others are involved.

As the banks had forwarded the email to the cyber police, investigators acquired the original IP address from the emails. All four emails to different banks originated from the same IP address. This led the police directly to Vanand in Ahmedabad.

Vanand sent emails to unfreeze accounts that were not even frozen by the Junagadh Range Cyber Police but by other agencies. Most of the accounts were held in banks outside Gujarat. He sent instructions using the hacked email account to unfreeze around ₹74 lakh across four bank accounts.