16-year-old ruled cyber fraud gang from Mumbai

MAFIA : 16-year-old ruled cyber fraud gang from Mumbai

15 Jun 2008

Parth Shastri,TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3129967.cms

AHMEDABAD: Ajay is 16 and studies in Class X. But let him loose in cyberspace and he's a millionnaire, leaving hundreds of credit card holders broke across the globe.

Ajay was picked up from Mumbai on Thursday and detained by the Gujarat police in a hacking case that left them baffled with its global spread.

This St Ann's student from Mulund has mastered the ability to hack online shopping websites and channel the money paid by cyber buyers into his own account.

The racket surfaced when Ahmedabad crime branch sleuths were investigating a case of hacking of a popular online shopping site and arrested three boys in the city. They turned out to be part of Ajay’s gang.

Probe has revealed that his network spreads across Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. His mentors live in the US, Vietnam and other countries.

Ajay, the son of an employee of a textile firm, would give instructions to Wahid Khan, a resident of Kalupur, and Shahid Khan and Haadi Ghoghai of Juhapura, both in Ahmedabad, until they were arrested on Thursday. Ajay had taught them to create fake accounts and crack into others’ credit card accounts to make big bucks.

His prowess in hacking high-security and government websites let Ajay into a hacking community, which gave him access to a huge database of credit card Customer Verification Value (CVV) numbers of prominent banks across the globe.

Ajay’s tools included his laptop, a communicator and a cellphone. But, police say, Ajay’s PC has no data and he has covered his tracks.

All the evidence available is from Shahid Khan’s laptop which has folders and files that hide cracked passwords and the IP addresses of internet domains that were hacked into for fraudulent financial transactions.

Ajay got in touch with online fraudsters during gaming and was hooked fast. He has told the police that after connecting with international hackers in the US, Vietnam, and other countries, he spent over 15 hours a day on the computer trying to figure out how it worked.

“He has a database of over 4,000 international credit cardholders, their CVV numbers and expiry dates,’ said a senior crime branch official.

He fooled the cyber police by using proxy servers for illegal transactions. “After making money illegally at the online shopping giant’s expense for over four months, he got in touch with Shahid Khan and Wahid Khan in Ahmedabad and let them into some secrets of the fraud,’’ said the official.

(Some names have been changed to protect identities.)

(Ajay and other looks like small parts of bigger Crime Syndicates. The methodologies indicate towards professional training by organized crime groups. They must be interrogated and punished as a message to others – Editor).