Data theft case: Police find solid evidence, diverted money still in accounts of arrested techies

By: Tushar Kaushik

The city police have arrested two management-level employees in the technology hub of Mahadevapura for allegedly stealing data and swindling money from their technology firm in what the police claim to be a rare case involving tech workers. The two were allegedly diverting funds to their own company, about which they had kept their employers in the dark. The money they diverted are still in their own accounts, which is a solid evidence against them, the police said.

Prathap BV and Karthik Srinivasan, employees of IonIdea Enteprise Solutions, were arrested under sections 406 (charges of criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating inducing delivery of property) and 120B (being party to criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.


According to DCP (Whitefield) Abdul Ahad, the two asked clients of IonIdea to remit money for services provided to their own bank accounts. They had allegedly swindled money to the tune of ?2 crore. In addition, the duo also stole data from IonIdea to use it in their own firm — Captive Med Solutions. Prathap and Karthik were working for IonIdea since 2012 and 2013, respectively. The DCP said the company’s owners are based in the US and had placed their trust on both the employees to manage the office here.

The duo’s actions came to light when they abruptly stopped going to work from November 2017 and did not return the office laptops. Other employees of IonIdea were able to track the laptops and gain access to it, which was when they discovered that the accused had swindled money paid by clients, stolen the firm’s data and also diverted clients. A complaint was lodged by IonIdea and the two were detained by the police, questioned for three days and then remanded in judicial custody.

Ahad said the clients’ money was found in the accounts of the accused, which would be recovered after following due procedure. “All offences they have been charged with are punishable with 3-9 years of imprisonment. If all the charges are proved and they are convicted, they could be looking at at least a 3-4 year jail term. The money transferred by clients is in their own bank accounts, which is solid evidence,” he said. He said the case was not transferred to the cyber crime police as it was essentially a case of breach of trust.

KS Santosh, founder of a cyber security solutions firm ‘Group Cyber ID,’ however, said such cases occur often and are broadly of two kinds. In the first, the perpetrators send emails to the firm’s clients, asking them to make payments to a different firm. Or, they ask them to make payment to another bank, bearing the firm’s name but which, in fact, they themselves would have created with the involvement of bank officials, Santosh said. He said sometimes, the account name would differ from the company’s name by just one letter, which would not be noticed by the client. “The second kind of frauds occurs in startups, where former employees steal data from the startup and begin their own firm using the data. Many companies have filed data theft complaints against individuals,” Santosh said.