Pune: A hardware shop owner and his friend from Belagavi in Karnataka were arrested on Thursday for their alleged involvement in an online fraud case involving a man-in-the-middle cyberattack. The accused allegedly cheated a city-based construction company in Hadapsar of Rs 1.95 crore in Jan.Senior inspector Swapnali Shinde of the Pune cyber police said, “We arrested Ajay Ramvilas Yadav (22) and Salman Gaus Moinuddin Ajnal (32), both residents of Belagavi, on Thursday evening. We established the money trail in the fraud case registered on Jan 19 and found that the account to which the money was transferred belonged to Yadav. Our team then nabbed Yadav and questioned him about the money credited to his account.” Shinde said, “Yadav, who runs a hardware shop with his father, holds a joint bank account. He had shared his bank account credentials with Ajnal, who works at a local garage. Ajnal had promised him a commission from the transactions. Based on this information, we arrested Ajnal. We are now searching for Ajnal’s handlers and others involved in the case.”The construction company had lodged a complaint with the police, stating that it had ordered construction and other equipment from another firm and was supposed to pay Rs1.95 crore towards the bills. The company received an email from an address almost identical to the equipment-supplying firm. The fraudsters had altered the email by inserting different bank account details instead of those of the legitimate firm. The Hadapsar-based firm, without verifying the account details with the firm’s officials, transferred the money to the bank account mentioned in the email.
