The Cyber Crime wing of police succeeded in unearthing the fraud after they arrested the mastermind, Joseph on November 29 last, from a city cyber cafe which he had been frequenting, following a complaint from Carl Braganza, HR Manager of Analog Infotech India Ltd.

He had state that he had been cheated to the tune of Rs 1.27 lakh by some unidentified hackers, according to a release from CoD (Corps of Detectives), Economic Offences Wing.

Joseph, a diploma holder in Computer Science, hailing from Virudanagar district in Tamil Nadu, used to hack into accounts of persons using ‘key logger’ software.

From the available e-mail accounts of Joseph, more than 100 bank account numbers, passwords and other details of individuals have been obtained.

HDFC Bank, Citi Bank, Axis Bank and ICICI Banks have confirmed the authenticity of about 70 existing accounts and passwords gathered by the CoD officers from Joseph's e-mail accounts.

Investigation revealed that out of 70 accounts, 17 have already been successfully hacked by Joseph with the help of his associates.

With the arrest of Joseph and his 11 associates, police have succeeded in solving seven cases out of the 17, involving illegal transfer of funds to the tune of Rs 7 lakh and further investigation was on.

Joseph had also transferred funds to the accounts of his accomplices, police said adding he was involved in four other cases of similar nature reported between August 2006 and August 2007.

On Joseph's modus operandi, police said during his visit to cyber cafes, he used to install ‘key logger’ software in the computers.

This software is freely available on the internet and it captures data provided by the subsequent users of the same computer.

Joseph used to retrieve data during his subsequent visits from the same computer and collect passwords and bank accounts details, they said.