PUNE: Four of the seven suspects arrested in the Cosmos Bank online heist case were also involved in the Rs 33.93-crore cyberattack on the City Union Bank’s head office in Chennai in December 2017, the cybercrime cell of the Pune police told a magisterial court here on Tuesday.During their interrogation, the suspects confessed of committing the crime in Chennai using the similar modus as used in the Cosmos Bank heist, police said. “The suspects attacked the Chennai bank’s server to steal information relating to debit cards and later used cloned cards for effecting withdrawals worth Rs 31.56 crore and Rs 2.37 crore on two separate occasions from ATMs in Tamil Nadu and other parts of the country in December 2017,” police added.The court extended the custodial remand of the four suspects — Fahim Mehfooz Shaikh, Fahim Azim Khan, Shaikh Mehmood Abdul Jabbar and Mahesh Sahebrao Rathod — till September 22. Shaikh and Khan were arrested on September 11, while Jabbar and Rathod were arrested on September 12. Cyber cell inspector Jairam Paigude produced them before the magistrate after the term of their initial custodial remand ended on Tuesday.Deputy commissioner of police (cyber) Jyoti Priya Singh said Khan and Jabbar, along with Naresh Laxminarayan Maharana (who was arrested on September 13), and Eustace Augustine Vaz alias Anthony (who was arrested on September 15), were involved in the Chennai bank online heist. Maharana, Anthony and another suspect, Mohammad Saeed Iqbal Hussai Jafri, will be in police custody remand till September 24.Singh said, “In December 2017, the City Union Bank officials had lodged a complaint with the Chennai police stating that unidentified persons hacked into the bank’s server and stole data, which they used later for effecting withdrawals from ATMs and money transfer to few accounts. A total of Rs 33.93 crore was siphoned off. We are in receipt of the CCTV footages of the ATM centres in Tamil Nadu from where these four men withdrew cash using the cloned debit cards of the City Union Bank.” The Pune police have now contacted their Chennai counterparts with this information.“It is the same set of suspects who have been regularly used by the cybercrime masterminds, who stole the data and prepared the cloned cards. We have launched a hunt for the upper crust of the ring. This team is active for the period of over a year now. The police are trying to locate the source of the cloned cards in both the cases. It might be the same person or a team,” Singh added.

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