In one of the biggest cybercrimes reported in Bengaluru, the city police have cracked a ₹47-crore online fraud involving an international hacking network spanning Hong Kong, Dubai, and India. Two men — a plumber from Udaipur and a digital marketer from Belagavi — have been arrested for aiding the hackers in siphoning off funds from Whizdm Finance Pvt. Ltd., the company that operates the Moneyview instant loan app.
According to City Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh, the hackers breached the firm’s servers between midnight on August 6 and 7, executing 1,782 fraudulent transactions within just two and a half hours. The money was diverted into 656 bank accounts across India.
The accused from Belagavi, Ismail Rasheed Attar (27), who had studied up to SSLC and worked as a digital marketer, played a crucial role in providing the technical infrastructure for the crime. Police said Attar had rented five servers from Webyne Data Centre and later sublet them to Dubai-based Indian operatives, who in turn collaborated with Hong Kong hackers to carry out the breach.
The servers rented through Attar were used to mask the hackers’ foreign IP addresses and access the company’s financial systems illegally. “Attar earned a small commission from renting the servers, but his role was critical in enabling the entire operation,” a senior officer said.
The other accused, Sanjay Patel (43) from Udaipur, whose SBI account received ₹27.39 lakh from the siphoned funds, was arrested earlier in September.
Police have so far recovered ₹10 crore and continue to trace the remaining amount. The investigation also revealed that over ₹5.5 crore had been routed through a Hyderabad-based firm, “Unknown Technologies Pvt. Ltd.”
Commissioner Singh added that efforts are underway to identify the Dubai-based masterminds and Hong Kong hackers behind the massive cyber fraud.