Three more held in Pune's Cosmos Bank cyber fraud case

The city police on Wednesday arrested three more persons in connection with the Cosmos Bank cyber fraud case in which hackers siphoned off over Rs 94 crore last year, an official said.

With the latest arrest, made by the Cyber Cell, the number of persons apprehended in the case has gone up to 18.

Police identified the accused as Shahbaz Khatri (30), Asif Shaikh (31) and Firoz Shaikh (37), all residents of Mumbai.

The trio was arrested by the Thane police recently in a cheating case and they were later found to have involved in the Cosmos case too, they said.

All three were formally arrested in the Cosmos case by the Pune police.

"The three accused have revealed they had fraudulently withdrawn over Rs 53 lakh from different ATMs in Jaipur and Indore," said an official from the Cyber Cell.

On August 11 and 13 last year, unidentified hackers stole information about Cosmos Bank's VISA and Rupay card customers by installing a malicious programme or 'malware' in the bank's server.

They attacked the interbank SWIFT system and siphoned off a total of Rs 94 crore, the police had said.

SWIFT is a a messaging system used by banks the world over to send information and instructions in an encrypted format through a secure channel.