Pune-Based Company Falls Victim to New Email Scam, Loses Rs 22 Lakh

Emails are an essential part of professional communications and also serve as an identification address. Therefore, to ensure that communication is encrypted and safe, it is always important to verify the email ID. Otherwise, you might end up facing cyber attacks, such as scams. This is exactly what happened to a Pune-based engineering supplies firm, which reportedly lost 24,000 EUROS after failing to notice a single letter change in the email address they were supposedly in contact with for business.

According to a recent case reported by The Indian Express, the Pune-based firm had placed an order of over 51,000 euros with a French-based company between January and early February this year. The order was sent to the email address of a sales manager of the company, with whom the Pune-based firm had been in contact for several years.

The French company then sent a pro-forma invoice to confirm the order. Shortly after, the firm received an email informing them that their regular bank account and SWIFT code from the Paris-based bank were not accessible. Instead, they were instructed to make the payment to a new account held by a bank headquartered in Lisbon. Trusting the communication, the executives of the Pune-based company paid an advance of 24,589 euros to the new Portuguese-based bank account.

However, after a few weeks, when the Pune-based company reached out to the French firm to inquire about the equipment shipment, officials from the French company stated that they had not yet received the payment. This raised suspicions, prompting verification of previous communication.

Later it was discovered that the email notifying the change in the bank account had actually originated from a fraudulent email address, which was different from the legitimate email address of the French entity by just one letter (an “a” instead of an “e”). Realising the deception, the firm reported the incident to the Pune police and filed a formal complaint.

While the case is under investigation, according to investigators from Pune City police, in this case the cyber criminals used a method known as a “man-in-the-middle” attack to trick the Pune firm. The scammers allegedly hack into the email accounts of businesses involved in transactions and steal information about their ongoing deals and orders. They then created a fake email account that looked similar to one of the real participants- in this case the French-based company.

Later, using this fake email, the scammers contacted the Pune firm and managed to dupe them by sending an email from the fake account, claiming that the original bank account is not working and asking for the deposit to be made into a different account that actually belongs to the hackers.

The police further explained that man-in-the-middle cyber attacks often occur when email ID users do not keep their email software updated with the latest security features and when they only communicate with each other through email, without using any other communication methods.

The cops further advise that to be safe from such scams, it is advisable to update your system and email ID. Additionally, here are some important tips to follow to avoid such scams: