11 get four years and seven months jail term in Cosmos Bank theft case in Pune

PUNE: A city court has convicted 11 accused and sentenced them to four years and seven months imprisonment in the Rs 94 crore Cosmos Cooperative Bank online heist case.
The convicts have been identified as Fahim Shaikh and Mohammad Saeed Iqbal Hussain Jafari from Bhiwandi, Fahim Khan and Shaikh Mohammed Abdul Jabbar from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Mahesh Rathod from Nanded, Naresh Maharana from Palghar, U A Waz alias Anthony, Bashir Ahmed and Feroz Shaikh from Mumbai, and Abdulla Shaikh and Salman Baig from Thane.

Additional commissioner of police (crime) Ramnath Pokale, while talking to TOI, said, “We had ample forensic digital evidence against the accused. The court relied on the same to pronounce their conviction.”
As many as 18 people were arrested in the case from different parts of the country. The court is still hearing the case against six accused, while one of the accused died during the trial.
Police have also identified the main hacker, who is currently based out of Dubai, and the process to extradite him is on. According to the police, the hackers stole details of the banks customers through a malware and carried out an online attack on the SWIFT system. They ended up siphoning over Rs 94crore on August 11 and 13, 2018.
The hackers had attacked the bank’s automated teller machine (ATM) switch server to withdraw Rs 78 crore from various ATMs in 28 countries and another Rs 2.5 crore within India. The hackers had also fraudulently transferred Rs 13.92 crore to a Hong Kong-based bank.