22-Year-Old Scammer Sending Fake Official Emails Arrested In Bengaluru

It is more and more common to see people being scammed via emails. Cybercriminals are smarter than they used to be, making it a challenge for us common folks to distinguish between a real and a fake bank or official email.

A 22-year-old has been arrested by the Delhi Police’s Cyber Cell in Bengaluru for creating an app that sent fake emails of banks and social media platforms to scam people.

“Email Spoofer” is the name of the app. It has over 100,000 downloads globally, mostly in the USA and in India.

Previously, many users sent their complaints to Cyber Cell, stating that they were scammed by emails that looked like they were from job searching sites, banks, matrimonial sites, etc. But when Cyber Cell reached out to these companies, they said that these emails weren’t from their official accounts. The police then carried out a deeper investigation which revealed that “Email Spoofer” was what behind this chaos.

As its name suggests, the app spoofed the ID of the email, removing any trace of the sender. If a malicious user took hold of the app, they would only need to add the target email while the subject, as well as the email ID of the sender, could be random. These IDs could be the official ID of some companies or banks.

This is why users find it difficult to differentiate between a fake and real email. Most of them would trust the email since it was sent from an official and authorized email ID.

The email’s location was then tracked and it led the police to Rupesh Bhandari, an Uttar Pradesh native who was living and working in Bengaluru.

The police scanned the accused’s laptop and discovered about 1.5 lakh emails. Some of them show money transactions.

Delhi Police will soon issue an official statement to other countries’ law enforcement agencies to warn them about the application.