Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Oct 28: In one of the largest cybercrimes reported in the city, Bengaluru police have arrested a plumber and a man who studied up to Class 10 for allegedly helping Hong Kong-based hackers and Dubai-based Indians siphon Rs 47 crore from Whizdm Finance Private Limited.
Commissioner of Police Seemant Kumar Singh said the arrested men —Sanjay Patel, 43, from Udaipur, Rajasthan, and Ismail Rasheed Attar, 27, from Belagavi — were key players in an international network that hacked into the servers of Whizdm Finance, a non-banking financial company (NBFC) offering instant loans of up to ?5 lakh through its Moneyview app.
Patel, a high-school dropout working as a plumber, was arrested on September 25, while Attar, a digital marketer providing online freelance services, was taken into custody on October 9. The Dubai-based Indians, who remain absconding, allegedly hired Attar to rent servers from Webyne Data Centre, which were then used to conduct the fraud.
Police investigations revealed that 1,782 unauthorised fund transfers were carried out in just 2.5 hours on the night of August 6–7, moving money into 656 different bank accounts across India.
The company’s internal checks confirmed that these transactions did not originate from its official systems or registered IP addresses but from foreign IP addresses in Hong Kong and Lithuania. Approximately Rs 47 crore was transferred illegally, with an additional Rs 2 crore loss identified during further investigations.
“One SBI account that received Rs 27.39 lac belonged to Patel,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime-2) Raja Imam Kasim. Another Rs 5.5 crore was transferred to an account in the name of 'Unknown Technologies Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad' and later routed to an ICICI Bank account.
Police stated that the Dubai-based men had contacted Attar via Telegram and rented five servers he owned, paying Rs 2,500 per server though their market price was only Rs 1,500. “The five IP addresses used by the hackers were traced back to these rented servers,” an officer involved in the investigation said.
The Hong Kong hackers then used these servers to bypass Whizdm Finance’s firewall and make unauthorised transfers, posing as instant loan applicants. The remaining Dubai-based conspirators and the overseas hackers are still absconding.
Commissioner Singh said, “We have recovered Rs 10 crore and are hopeful of recovering the rest.”
This case highlights the increasing sophistication of international cybercrime networks and the vulnerabilities faced by finance companies in India.