Cyber crime: NIE principal’s email account hacked

Students receive mail seeking $US 2,400 for surgery

Many students of National Institute of Engineering (NIE), Mysore, were shocked to receive an email from their principal’s official address asking for a loan of $2,400 to undergo a surgery in Istanbul.

Though the email was the handiwork of fraudsters, some students fell for it and replied seeking to know how the money could be transferred.

The fraudsters replied by providing the principal’s name and an address in Istanbul with a request to wire the money through Western Union money transfer.

But, just before a student could send $US 200, he learnt it was a scam.

NIE Principal G.L. Shekar told The Hindu that the official email account had been hacked into and the fraudsters may have sent the e-mail to hundreds of addresses in the contact list. “Almost every student of NIE has received the email from the hacked yahoo account. The account has now become inaccessible to my staff. Yahoo service is not responding to the helpline,” Mr. Shekar said.

Though the mail has been sent from principalnie.yahoo.com, the fraudsters had automated the reply to be sent to principa1nie@yahoo.com — replacing the alphabet ‘l’ with the digit ‘1’.

Inspector of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Mysore Renukaradhya, who has handled cyber crime cases, said victims of such frauds can lodge a complaint with the jurisdictional police station, which will register an FIR and hand over the investigation to the cyber crime police. The cyber crime police can trace the IP address.

Mr. Renukaradhya said email frauds, which were earlier carried out from Nigeria, had today spread across different parts of the globe, including India. Citing a recent case, where the fraudsters had asked the victim to deposit money in a bank account in India,

Mr. Renukaradhya said the account was based from Noida and the culprits had managed to open an account with the help of a fake address proof.

Meanwhile, Mirza Faizan of Global Cyber Security Response Team (GCSRT) said the email was clearly the handiwork of fraudsters. Even though the modus operandi is not new, the fraudsters keep trying to net gullible people.

By sending such emails to thousands, the conmen hope at least some fall for it, he said.