In one of Bengaluru’s biggest cybercrime cases, police have busted a ₹47-crore online fraud linked to an international hacking network operating across Hong Kong, Dubai, and India. Two individuals, a plumber from Udaipur and a digital marketer from Belagavi, have been arrested for assisting the hackers in diverting funds from Whizdm Finance Pvt. Ltd., the company behind the Moneyview instant loan app.
City Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh said the hackers infiltrated the company’s servers between midnight on August 6 and 7, executing 1,782 fake transactions within just two and a half hours. The stolen money was routed into 656 bank accounts across the country.
The Belagavi accused, Ismail Rasheed Attar (27), who studied up to SSLC and worked as a digital marketer, allegedly played a key role by providing the technical setup for the crime. Investigations revealed that Attar had rented five servers from Webyne Data Centre and later sublet them to Dubai-based Indian operatives, who collaborated with hackers from Hong Kong to breach the company’s systems.
These servers were used to conceal the hackers’ foreign IP addresses and gain unauthorized access to Whizdm Finance’s internal network. “Attar earned only a small commission from the server rentals, but his role was vital in enabling the entire operation,” a senior officer stated.
The second accused, Sanjay Patel (43) of Udaipur, was arrested earlier in September after ₹27.39 lakh from the siphoned funds was found in his SBI account.
Police have recovered ₹10 crore so far and are tracing the remaining amount. The probe also found that over ₹5.5 crore was funneled through a Hyderabad-based firm, Unknown Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Commissioner Singh said efforts are ongoing to track down the Dubai-based masterminds and Hong Kong hackers behind the large-scale cyber fraud.
