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Data Theft - Delhi
Case – 11: Data theft
State: Delhi
City: New Delhi
Sections of Law: 420/408/120B IPC R/W 66 IT Act.
Background
The complainant filed a case of fraud and cheating alleging theft and sale of proprietary data. The complainant had a subsidiary company in the United States which did business with its US partner. The US partner provided mortgage loans to US residents for residential premises. The business of the complainant was providing leads to their US partner. The data included the details of the loan seekers along with their telephone numbers. The complainant generated leads through arrangements with call centers in India who called from their database and shortlisted home owners who were interested in availing refinance facility on their existing mortgage loans.
The complainant realized that there was a sudden drop in the productivity of the call centers and therefore the production of leads, although the inputs meant to be given to various call centers by the employees of the company, had remained the same as before. The concerned officials of the company got alarmed and made an in house enquiry. On a careful and meticulous scrutiny it was revealed that one of the employees of the complainant (company), in connivance with some other officers, had been deceiving and causing wrongful loss to the company by selling the data purchased by the company and in effect wrongful gain for themselves.
Investigation
Preliminary investigations revealed that the accused was holding the post of the senior programme manager and was the team leader for data management. During employment the accused along with his father had opened a partnership firm. It was found that raw data was sent as attachments from the e-mail ID of this (accused) firm’s Website domain. The Website was traced and the e-mail ID address and registration details were recovered by the investigating officer using specialized softwares. It was revealed that the accused had passed data bought by and belonging to the complainant firm to various call centers (as if the same belonged to his firm), to make the calls on their behalf for generating leads.
The entire business process of the complainant firm was studied and a systems analysis was conducted to establish the possible source of data theft. The accused had opened a foreign currency account in the name of his firm. An analysis of the printout revealed that payments had been made to two call centers. The call centers were contacted and the raw data sent as attachments were collected. The data was comprised of six separate files and it was compared with the data purchased by the complainant company in the US. This was done by writing and executing SQL queries.
Analysis of the e-mail headers of the mails sent by the accused through his ID were carried out. The originating IP address was found and information was obtained from VSNL. Accordingly it was found that the range of IP was allotted to the complainant company. It was thus established that the accused has sent the stolen data from the office of the complainant company using the e-mail ID of his (accused) firm.
An analysis of the bank account of the accused showed that payments were being made to two people. It was found that they were also ex-employees of the complainant company who had resigned after the accused left the company. On interrogation he revealed that he had roped in two of his colleagues who actively assisted him in his clandestine activities. One of them, while still an employee of the complainant company, coordinated with various call centers on behalf of the accused. The other facilitated the installation of proprietary sequencing software in the personal computer of the accused. In order to have a clientele base in the US, the accused had sought the assistance of one more person. The two accused were arrested.
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