'Money spent on luxury hotels & pubs': 3 held for faking court orders & police email ID to cheat bank of Rs 1.3 crore

TNN / Updated: Apr 12, 2025, 08:11 IST

Text Size

Small
Medium
Large

Bengaluru cybercrime police arrested three men for allegedly fabricating court orders to defraud ICICI Bank of Rs 1.3 crore. The fraudsters obtained a fake KSWAN email ID by impersonating a police officer and used it to send fraudulent orders to release money from frozen accounts.

'Money spent on luxury hotels & pubs': 3 held for faking court orders & police email ID to cheat bank of Rs 1.3 crore

BENGALURU: Three men who allegedly fabricated court orders to get money released from frozen accounts and deceived a private bank to the tune of Rs 1.3 crore have been arrested by the cyber crime police in the city.
The fraudsters fraudulently obtained an email ID from the Karnataka State Wide Area Network (KSWAN) by providing fake information and impersonating a police officer. They used the email ID to communicate with the bank to send fake orders to get the money released, investigations revealed.
Sagar Lakura, 23, the mastermind, from Sirohi district, Rajasthan, and his associates Abhimanyu Kumar Panday, 26, and Neeraj Singh, 28, both from Delhi have been arrested following a complaint filed from the Halasur branch manager of ICICI Bank.
According to the complaint, 18 fake court orders were sent to the bank's nodal mail ID from cb-crime-sog@karnataka.gov.in between Sept 19 last year and Feb 12. The fake orders directed the bank to transfer money from various accounts which had been frozen after court orders for involvement in cyber crimes, mainly betting.

Sagar, who claimed to be an officer of the rank of superintendent of police, communicated with the bank staff on the phone about unfreezing the accounts, police said.
The bank staff believed the orders were genuine and transferred a total of Rs 1.3 crore from two ICICI Bank accounts to an Axis Bank account mentioned in the mail. The fraud came to light during an internal audit.
A police team headed by inspector Hazaresh Killedar found that the Axis Bank account belonged to the Delhi-based Panday and traced him on March 10. He confessed to opening the account on instructions from Neeraj. The same day, police swooped down on Neeraj, who revealed the role of Sagar. The kingpin was picked up from his native on March 19.
Sagar, who had failed in his 12th standard and assisted his elder brother in editing photos in the latter's studio, became addicted to betting and lost money. In one case, his account was frozen a couple of years ago. With the help of a lawyer, he got the account unfrozen during which he learnt about the procedure and hatched a conspiracy to make quick money by impersonating cops and creating fake court orders to cheat the bank.
He had previously been arrested in Gujarat for creating a fake email ID of a senior police officer and using it to get a bank to unfreeze an account and transfer the money to his own. After coming out on bail, he turned his focus to other states.
Sagar created a fake gmail ID as the SP, Chickpet, Bengaluru, and wrote emails to KSWAN, which comes under the state govt. He managed to get an email ID as cb-crime-sog@karnataka.gov.in. He then managed to get the data of the frozen accounts, leading to the transfer of the money. He targeted accounts frozen mainly in Bengaluru and Mysuru, police said.
Money spent on lux hotels & pubs
Sagar confessed to having spent over Rs 38 lakh from the proceeds of his crime to lead a lavish life. He stayed in five-star hotels, paying over Rs 20,000 per day for a room. He also visited dance bars and pubs where he spent money. His bank accounts did not have money but police froze Rs 63 lakh in Panday's.
Panday was paid Rs 8 lakh for providing the bank account, and Neeraj over Rs 3 lakh for helping him. Panday and Neeraj had spent the remaining money in the former's account. Neeraj is a BCom graduate, while Panday is a watchman at a Metro station parking lot in Delhi.

End of Article