Stolen credit card numbers have been used by a
Mumbai-Bangalore gang to book online tickets on Kingfisher, Jet
Airways and Air Deccan. These have been sold at discounted rates to
other customers.
When you book online, you’re required to give the credit card number,
validity period and the last three digit numbers provided on the
reverse of the card (PIN).
Ajay Patel randomly used 50 ICICI credit card numbers by changing the
last two digits and in place of the PIN, he used another code to book
the tickets.
His Bangalore counterparts used cybercafes to take the printouts of
tickets and sold them at discounted rates till they were arrested by
the Bangalore cyber crime cell.
The fraud came to light when ICICI Bank monitored online credit of
purchases of Kingfisher Airlines and noticed an unusual pattern in one
credit card user.
When the bank contacted him, he was unaware of these ticket purchases
worth Rs 42,000. Online banking too has not been without complaints.
A Citibank account holder lodged a complaint that Rs 1,00,500 had been
transferred from his account to another. After investigation, the
perpetrators have been arrested.
They are on bail and the hard disks seized have been sent for analysis.
After receiving the report, a chargesheet will be filed. Yet another
interesting case has come to light.Two US nationals came to Bangalore to
set up a call centre which operates in illegal pornography sites. They
got credit card details of over 1.5 million users in the US and used
this to siphon off money through another site.
Modus operandi: Daniel Pena and Robert (Bill) Smith have websites from which you
can download MP3 files. These have sublinks to four porn sites which
are paid sites. Izone Technologies Inc
When users of these websites pay to access these illegal sites, the
credit card details are misused to access similar websites of their own
creation which automatically debit money from them without their
knowledge.
Pena and Smith had also asked their Indian company, Customer Connect Izone Technologies Inc, to
service their toll-free number which had been set up to divert the grievances of their fraudulent websites in the US.
Otherwise, complaints would have been registered with banks which wouldhave immediately cancelled the e-commerce facility.
Enquiries have come in from the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI and
other anti-fraud agencies from the US to check out the whereabouts of
Bill Smith.
An Indian software engineer, who had been caught unknowingly in this
scam, has filed an FIR; the case is under investigation. S Mahapatra,
IGP, Economic Offences, (CoD) said the number of cases and enquiries
areincreasing.
"Unlike before when banks and other organisations would not come forward
to lodge complaints, now FIRs are being filed and we are using
technology experts to help us investigate such cases," he said.
Source:
http://cybercrime.planetindia.net/Cyber-criminals-zero-in-on-airlines.htm
