Chennai: Cybercriminals siphoned off ₹22.1 crore belonging to Tamil Nadu rural development department after breaching its online portal used to transfer funds to rural local bodies. Chennai Central Crime Branch (CCB) has registered a case and launched an investigation.Preliminary probe revealed that ₹14 crore was transferred from Mandapam Panchayat Union in Ramanathapuram district, ₹3.1 crore from Nagapattinam Panchayat Union and ₹5 crore from Dharapuram Panchayat Union in Tiruppur district.The department’s backend financial operations were maintained by a private bank. Investigators suspect that the perpetrators had accessed the bank’s website, stolen login credentials and diverted the funds to unauthorised bank accounts in North India.An examination of email logs reportedly revealed suspicious access attempts originating from Bangladesh, United States and Greece. Police were examining whether overseas hackers or an international cybercrime network had links to the fraud.The special teams were tracing the beneficiary bank accounts and analysing digital records to establish how the portal was accessed. Investigators were also examining whether insiders had assisted the perpetrators.The probe focused on identifying those behind the transactions, establishing the money trail and recovering the diverted amount. No arrests had been reported at the time of writing.
