Shahjahanpur Police in Uttar Pradesh have arrested a 26-year-old man identified as Gaurav, who allegedly hacked around 500 bank accounts after learning online fingerprint cloning.
The police said that Gaurav learned cloning fingerprints using glue-guns and adhesives through the Internet. He, in collusion with a bank mitras, extorted money from the bank accounts of the beneficiaries of various government schemes.
After receiving repeated complaints by the police from several beneficiaries that there was no money in their bank accounts, an investigation was launched.
The crime branch worked upon the case and the investigation, and found that the funds were deposited in the accounts of the beneficiaries first. But later, it was withdrawn through Jan Suvidha Kendras, being run by bank mitras.
After investigating further, the police shared that Shivram, Sunil Tripathi, Dev Vrat, Sandeep Singh, Shehrun, Rajveer, and Hukum Singh, all bank mitras, were conspiring with Gaurav and were involved in the racket which was being run in the Jalalabad area of the district.
While providing some more information, the Police said that Gaurav used the glue-gun and adhesive fingerprints for Bank Mitra, which would have cost him less than Rs 5 per cloning.
IG Rajesh Pandey said:
“They used cloned fingerprints to spoof biometrics to carry out financial transactions by hacking bank accounts. Most of the victims are illiterate. The technique used for cloning fingerprints is available online and it is often misused. We will see if such contents can be removed.”
The five accused – Gaurav, Shivram, Sunil Tripathi, Dev Vrat and Sandeep Singh have been arrested by the police. The search for other accused is still on.
The arrested accused are charged under sections 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged 1[document or electronic record] and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code.
