Hyderabad: 5 Held for Rs 3-Cr Ticketing Fraud
The company has since terminated its contract with the software firm and sought IP logs and phone details, which are awaited. “Based on available evidence, we have made the arrests. More suspects who switched off their phones and absconded are being traced.”
Hyderabad: Five persons were arrested for allegedly defrauding a travel company of over Rs 3 crore by exploiting a technical glitch in its online ticket booking and wallet platform. According to the Cyberabad cyber crime police, the fraud took place between May and July this year, causing a loss of Rs 3,00,91,683. The accused were identified as Chennupati Sivannarayana, Kadali Narayana Swamy, Anugula Rajkumar, Jadda Brahmaiah and Pericherla Varma.
Investigating officer Shiva Prasad said all five were employees of Sri Krishna Travels. “These employees had multiple roles — sometimes as drivers, sometimes as booking agents. They discovered the glitch in the company’s ticket-booking app and repeatedly misused it. There is no single kingpin; whoever exploited the bug more, gained more,” he said.
Police explained that the company’s reservation app, developed by a Bengaluru-based software firm, had a flaw in its wallet refund system. When users recharged their wallets, booked tickets and then cancelled them, the wallet balance was wrongly credited with both the refund and the original amount.
The accused used the excess wallet balance to make further bookings and collected fares directly from passengers into their personal accounts. “The fraud came to light when the company noticed that while ticket bookings remained high, revenues were much lower. They also found that cancellations were unusually frequent,” Cyberabad cyber crime DCP B. Sai Sri told Deccan Chronicle.
The company has since terminated its contract with the software firm and sought IP logs and phone details, which are awaited. “Based on available evidence, we have made the arrests. More suspects who switched off their phones and absconded are being traced,” the DCP added.
Officials said that while the arrested employees’ involvement was recent, some passengers had been exploiting the same glitch for nearly two years. “The exact amount of the scam is being ascertained,” an official said.
