A Delhi dry fruits trader learned the hard way why one should never trust free email portals with sensitive transactions.
Satish Mehra, a six- decade veteran of the business, was negotiating the payment for a walnut kernel consignment worth Rs.1.05 crore when someone allegedly hacked into his Gmail account and got the money routed to an offshore bank account that was not his.
According to the complaint filed with the Delhi Police’s Cyber Cell, the incident took place in February.
Based in Khari Baoli, Delhi’s oldest dry fruits market, Mehra’s business also involves international transactions.
Since 2011, the trader has been conducting this branch of his business through an agent named Jollen.
As for the remaining payment, Mehra had asked Jollen to have it transferred to Bank of New York Mellon, a New York-based financial institution that has a tie- up with Karnataka Bank, where his company has an account.
This money, however, never came despite repeated reminders from Mehra. The true story came out when Jollen visited Mehra earlier this month and showed him around five- six emails that he was sent from the trader’s account.
The Delhi Police Cyber Cell has registered an FIR under the Information Technology Act, but they are not optimistic about making any headway as the alleged hacker is based abroad.
“We will try our best, but legal restrictions mean we can’t go beyond a certain limit. Even if we get information about the criminals, we can’t arrest them until they are in India,” a police officer said.
The police say Mehra committed a grave mistake by using a free email portal for business transactions. It is for this reason that most companies usually use their own email servers.
