E-mail fraud: 10th pass criminals learn dirty tricks from YouTube, dupe ministry of whopping Rs 4 cr - Details of what happened

E-mail fraud: Digitisation has brought a lot of convenience to people in terms of getting timely services even in remote corners of the country, but it has also facilitated many others who are devising ways to dupe people of their hard earned money. They are even not sparing government departments. Recently, one such incident came to light, in which culprits have Union Health Ministry to the tune of whopping Rs 4 crore, said a Hindustan report, adding that Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police has arrested 4 culprits from Assam after lodging a case against them. 

According to the report, the public financial management system of Union Ministry of health and family welfare is situated at Nirman Bhawan in Delhi from where the payment of all the bills takes place.

The report said that all these bills are sent to the website of the public financial management system and these emails are processed through the government agency NIC through a proper procedure. Under this process between July and December 2018, bills were paid sent through email in the name of Puducherry office, said the report, adding that the bills sent through different emails were paid at the accounts with Bank of Baroda. 

All the culprits who are merely high school pass have been involved in making of fake Aadhaar cards, said the report, adding that they had earlier committed scholarship fraud. Later they got their fake PAN card made to open bank account that they used for this crime. The culprits chalked out their strategy to dupe the ministry after watching the YouTube videos, the report added. On Youtube, culprits saw the public financial management system's website video and learnt as to how the outstanding bills were paid. Further, they learnt the process through YouTube and understood that bill payments were done through NIC email ID, the report added. 

When the details of fraud came to fore in the month of December last year, an FIR was lodged with Economic Offences wing by the ministry official, Maya Rawat, on December 27, 2018. 

According to the report, Investigation Officer Sub-Inspector Deepak Pandey during the probe came to know that the centre of fraud was in Assam. The police team then reached Morigaon district and through surveillance arrested the key person along with his associates.