Cyber Con Artist Poses as Real Estate Firm Representative, Defrauds SBI Staff of Rs. 38.2 Lakh

Yogesh K Porwar

Posing as a representative of a city-based real estate firm, a cyber con artist managed to defraud the State Bank of India (SBI) staff of Rs. 38.2 lakh on last Wednesday. The fraud was executed by spoofing an authorized email account and making urgent payment requests.

Based on the complaint filed by the Chief Manager of the State Bank of India, the East Division Cyber Crime Police registered an FIR on Monday, charging the accused under various sections of the IT Act and impersonation under BNS for further investigation.

According to the complaint, the SBI Banaswadi branch has been handling an RERA escrow account for Adithi Developers, a city-based real estate developer, since July this year. This account is designed to ensure that all purchases of apartments in the project are accompanied by the deposit of consideration, and all vendor payments are made through this account.

All deposits and withdrawals are strictly regulated under statutory guidelines to ensure transparency and safeguard the interests of homebuyers and investors. The branch has been processing genuine payment instructions for project-related disbursements, vendor settlements, and other legitimate expenses of the developer. These requests have consistently originated from the registered official e-mail ID, and no discrepancies had been observed prior to the present fraudulent incident.

The account has been in regular operation without any adverse remarks, and the customer has maintained a healthy relationship with the branch. Given the regulatory nature of RERA accounts, the bank exercises heightened scrutiny and due diligence in handling all transactions.

However, on last Wednesday at around 11:01 am, the branch received a telephone call from someone claiming to be an authorized person from Adithi Developers. The caller referred to an email request for the transfer of funds and insisted that the payments be processed urgently to meet the project requirements. As the payment instructions were received through an email sent from [email protected], the authorized email account, an RTGS transfer of Rs. 38.2 lakh was made to the beneficiaries.

Since similar instructions had previously been received from the said registered email ID and duly executed for authorized project-related disbursements, the bank staff proceeded with the transaction. The fraud came to light the next day when the authorized representative of Adithi Developers contacted the branch and categorically denied having initiated or authorized the transactions. By then, the funds had already been transmitted through the RTGS system.

They confirmed that no such instructions were issued by them through their official email ID, nor did they make any telephonic request in this regard. Upon further scrutiny of the email header details, it was discovered that the fraudulent instructions had been sent from an unauthorized and spoofed email account deliberately designed to resemble the genuine ID, thereby misleading both the branch and the customer.

The staff filed an online complaint through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal before approaching the police for help. The police are now trying to track down the accused through the money transactions.