One of the key accused in Rs 94-cr Cosmos Bank malware attack arrested in UAE

PUNE: One of the key accused and alleged gang leader in the 2018 Cosmos Bank heist was arrested in United Arab Emirates (UAE), the police said on Friday.

The arrested accused, identified as Sumer Shiekh (28), now resident of Dubai, native of Mumbai, was wanted in the alleged Rs 94-crore malware attack on Cosmos Cooperative Bank, which has its headquarters in Pune.

In this case, the Pune police will follow up with the UAE police through the Central Investigation Agency for the extradition of the accused.

In 2020, Interpol had issued a red corner notice against the prime suspect, Sumer sheikh in the case. According to the police, Sheikh conspired to commit the crime by buying bank’s customer information from the dark web, creating fake debit cards, distributing debit cards to his associates and asking them to withdraw cash through them.

In one of the biggest cyberattacks on an Indian bank, several cloned debit cards of Cosmos Bank were used for thousands of ATM transactions from India and 28 other countries in a period of seven hours on August 11, 2018.

While around Rs 78 crore was withdrawn in more than 12,000 ATM transactions outside India, another 2,800 transactions of Rs 2.5 crore were made in different places in India.

Further, on August 13, 2018, more Rs 13.92 crore were transferred to a Hong Kong-based entity using Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunications (SWIFT) facility. The transactions outside India were done through Visa cards, those in India through RuPay cards, a probe has shown.

Pune city police and Cosmos Bank have succeeded in getting back Rs 5.72 crore that fraudsters transferred into a bank in Hong Kong.

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