An official of a private bank has lodged a complaint with the police that some unknown fraudster had created a bogus email ID of Nagpur Cyber Cell police and have sent emails to the bank asking them to freeze and defreeze certain bank accounts. The police have initiated a probe to ascertain why the fraudster had sent those emails.
According to the police, the complainant in the case is a 36-year-old woman working as assistant branch manager with the bank. On May 07, the bank had received an email from cybercrimecell-nagpur@maharashtrapolice.in asking to freeze certain bank accounts. The email stated, "I am writing to you on behalf of Maharashtra Police in connection with a serious matter involving fraudulent transactions associated with one of your account holders. We have reason to believe that the account is currently being used for fraudulent activities. Our investigation indicates unauthorised transactions in the person's account and fraud amount has been credited in his account. In order to prevent further unauthorised access, we kindly request you to take immediate action to block the account."
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In the email, the fraudster also sought a bank statement along with contact details of the account holder. "There have been fraudulent transactions credited to all mentioned accounts from a part-time job on Telegram during the months of December 2023 to January 2024 for which we have requested to block the Account. We understand the importance of confidentiality in such matters, and we appreciate your cooperation in handling this situation discreetly. Maharashtra Police is actively involved in investigating this case, and we request your assistance in freezing the account to prevent any additional fraudulent activities. We will further send the email for unblocking the account after the investigation is complete," the email further stated.
Later on May 16 and May 18 the bank again received emails from the same email ID asking the bank to unblock certain accounts. However, the bank got suspicious since the domain gov.in was not present in the cyber cell's email ID. The bank then informed the police about the same and learnt that the said email ID was fake. A case has been registered under sections 170 (personating a public servant) 419 (cheating by personation), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using genuine a forged) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66C (identity theft) of the Information Technology Act.
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