IANS/Mumbai
In a shocker for Mumbai police, at least 14 salary accounts of policemen with the private Axis Bank were hacked and the monies siphoned out by some unidentified persons in Britain and Greece, a top official said here yesterday.
The salary accounts of the 14 policemen are among a total of 29 accounts which were hacked in the past few weeks, raising serious concerns among law enforcers over modern online banking system.
Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Satyanarain Choudhary, while confirming the development, told media persons that the entire issue is being investigated thoroughly.
“The incidents have occurred since April. Besides the salary accounts of the policemen, there are savings accounts of general public. Even on Thursday, the bank officials confirmed that accounts were hacked in different parts of the city,” said Choudhary.
According to preliminary investigations and the check of the bank’s internal systems, an amount of around Rs1.30mn has been withdrawn from three cities in Britain and Athens in Greece.
Not ruling out a possible leak of sensitive data from the bank, including confidential pin numbers and passwords of the ATM debit cards of the affected customers, investigators say that some of the victims received SMSs saying that the cash in their accounts had been withdrawn in euros.
Police suspect that after getting hold of the sensitive data of the customers, a gang may be making duplicate cards to withdraw the money from ATMs in Britain and Greece.
Cybercrime detectives have already tracked one such duplicate card used at an Axis Bank ATM near the headquarters of the state police in Colaba.
