23-Year-Old IIIT Graduate Arrested For Rs 4 Crore Credit Card Fraud In Bengaluru

A 23-year-old computer science graduate from the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Ongole has been arrested by the Bengaluru police for allegedly hacking into a website and siphoning credit card reward points worth Rs 4.16 crore.

The accused had fraudulently redeemed about 6 lakh gift vouchers, the police said.

23-Year-Old IIIT Graduate Arrested For Rs 4 Crore Credit Card Fraud

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Earlier this week, on Tuesday, Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayananda announced the arrest of 23-year-old Bommaluru Lakshmipathi and said that they had managed to seize valuables worth Rs 4.16 crore from him, including 5 kg of gold. It was the biggest seizure made by the Bengaluru police in a cybercrime case this year, officials said.

Lakshmipathi, who hails from Andhra Pradesh, graduated from IIIT, Ongole, and landed a job in a software firm in Bengaluru, the police said. He quit this job in December and worked in Dubai for a couple of months before returning to Bengaluru, as per an Indian Express report.

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Learnt Hacking During College Days

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According to a police officer, Lakshmipathi had learned hacking during his college days. "He wanted to test his skills and tried it out on Reward360, a firm that manages loyalty and rewards programmes. He managed to hack the website and siphoned gift vouchers to his account for nearly six months before he was caught," the officer added.

According to the police, Lakshmipathi zeroed in on Reward360 after he faced an issue with his credit card. When he contacted his bank, they solved the problem and gave him a reward voucher as compensation. Curious about how the reward voucher system worked, Lakshmipathi found that Reward360 was the company that offered the voucher, the police said. "While trying his hacking skills, Lakshmipathi managed to crack the security and designed the code in such a way that he constantly got gift vouchers," the officer said.

Lakshmipathi then started redeeming his gift vouchers, which could only be used on e-commerce platforms, to buy gold, silver, bikes, etc. ¡°He wanted to pool in all the money and open a cyber security firm or settle in Dubai,¡± a police official said.

But a month ago, Reward360 started receiving complaints from clients about being unable to redeem their vouchers. An internal probe revealed that most of the vouchers were redeemed from a single account. The company approached the South-East CEN police and filed a complaint on June 24, the police said. As per the report, South-East CEN Police Inspector Harish V. Reddy and his team found out that the operations were being carried out from Whitefield and identified Lakshmipathi as the person behind the crime.

Police chief Dayananda said the police seized 5.26 kg of gold worth Rs 3.40 crore, 25.25 kg of silver worth Rs 21.80 lakh, Rs 11.13 lakh in cash, seven two-wheelers worth Rs 12 lakh, two laptops worth Rs 1.30 lakh, and three mobile phones worth Rs 90,000 from Lakshmipathi. The police also found Rs 26 lakh in his Flipkart wallet and Rs 3.50 lakh in his Amazon wallet.

Also Read: Warning Signs Of Approaching A Credit Card Debt Trap

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"A Brilliant Student From A Poor Family"

¡°A brilliant student, Lakshmipathi comes from a poor family. His parents are farmers and do not know what their son is doing. Lakshmipathi saved all the gold and silver in his native place and kept the two-wheelers in Bengaluru. This is the biggest seizure in a cybercrime case made by police in 2023,¡± a police officer said. Lakshmipathi has been sent to judicial custody.

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