Hacker, associates arrested for 'shoplifting' e-vouchers

In a first of its kind case, a group of professional hackers managed to sabotage the payment gateway of several e-commerce sites and were able to avail the proceeds to fuel their thirst for a luxurious life.

The group comprising BTech students managed to 'shoplift' e-vouchers from famous companies like Make My Trip, Amazon, Flipkart, Dominos Pizzas, Shoppers Stop and other online shopping companies and have availed products worth Rs 92 lakh.

The hacking group was formed by professional hacker Sunny Nehra who had roped in Azad Choudhary, Prakhar Aggarwal, Tejveeer Sheoran in his group. The group employed data tampering techniques to freeze the payment gateway options of various sites and were able to avail products worth Rs 50,000 for Re 1.

The case came to the fore, when the complainant from an e-commerce firm, Voucha Gram India, which also administers an online website www.gyftr.com, alleged that their website was hacked and e-vouchers worth approximately Rs one crore were digitally stolen. The accused had hacked an online payment gateway — 'PayU'.

Since this was the first time such a case came to light, the South Delhi District, formed a special team led by the ACP and SHO of Hauz Khas area and also a fellow BTech pass out — Sub Inspector Varun Gullaiya, whose inputs were crucial in cracking the case.

The complainant had provided a mountain of data procured by the complainant firm from various e-merchant firms.

The analysis revealed that e-vouchers which were digitally shoplifted belonged to companies like Make My Trip, Amazon, Flipkart, Big Bazar, Reliance Digital, Myntra.com, Yatra.com, Dominos Pizzas, Prestige, Titan, Provogue, Shoppers Stop and other online shopping companies. During the cost analysis, it was found that the total financial loss amounted to Rs 92 lakh. The police had to use the painstaking method of data analysis to trace the hackers' whereabouts. Since the group kept changing their locations, the police had to stay one step ahead and thus finally managed to track their identities and later monitored their activities on Facebook and WhatsApp.

"Further, data was acquired from PayU, Amazon, Flipkart, Reliance Digital, etc and soon, a detailed analysis of the logs revealed the identity of the primary suspect who was using this digital money to fund a luxurious lifestyle," said Deputy Commissioner of Police (South), Ishwar Singh.

The first hacker to land in the police net was Sunny Nehra himself. He was arrested after carefully monitoring his activities. After he was found staying at a Five Star hotel, Leela Ambience, Gurgaon, a raiding team was sent and he was arrested. After his interrogation, he gave up the locations of his other team members who were all arrested.

The police have so far claimed that the group had mainly hacked into the payment gateways to commit financial frauds. "They were all youngsters and were mainly motivated by money. We are also going to look into their involvements in other cases as well. So far, they have been charged under Sections 420 of the IPC and 66 of the IT Act," said a senior police official.