Cosmos Bank Cyber Fraud case : 11 accused get four years and seven months jail term

Pune: In a major breakthrough in the 2018 Cosmos Bank malware attack case, a local court has convicted 11 persons for their involvement in the Rs 94-crore cyber heist, said police.

The convicted individuals include Fahim Shaikh, Mohammad Saeed Iqbal Hussain Jafari, Fahim Khan, Shaikh Mohammed Abdul Jabbar, Mahesh Rathod, Naresh Maharana, U A Waz alias Anthony, Bashir Ahmed, Feroz Shaikh, Abdulla Shaikh, and Salman Baig.

The cyber attack on Cosmos Bank was one of the biggest cyber attacks on an Indian bank at the time, where several cloned debit cards were used for thousands of ATM transactions from India and 28 other countries in 2018. The cyber criminals withdrew around Rs 78 crore in more than 12,000 ATM transactions outside India, and another set of 2,800 transactions of Rs 2.5 crore were made in different places across the country. Additionally, more Rs 13.92 crore were transferred to a Hong Kong-based entity on August 13, 2018, using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) facility.

According to the police, most of those arrested were involved in withdrawing money from different ATMs using cloned cards of Cosmos Bank, as per instructions from the handlers. The police suspect that the racketeers gave them part of the money that they withdrew as a commission. With the conviction of the 11 individuals, it is hoped that justice will be served, and it will act as a deterrent for others planning to carry out cyber attacks in the future.