Two technical supervisors of a leading data bank here were arrested on Sunday after they hacked into the company server and accessed data before blackmailing the organisation for the sum of Rs 4 lakh.
In what is described as a “new age crime” by the cops, the duo Pradeep (32), a native of Amayoor in Palakkad, and Jibin Abraham Mathew (22), of Pathanamthitta, first won the confidence of the company owner, who in turn assigned them charge of the online activities.
The accused, both IT experts, slowly learnt the password and access code to the secret data files of leading clients.
“Then one day they vanished with the data and directly contacted the clients offering them services at a smaller sum than the company was asking,” a police official said.
The data bank company, based in Palarivattom, stores crucial data of high-profile people as secondary storage. It is only one of the two such organisations functioning in Kochi.
The data ranges from information regarding business activities, details of clients and investments.
The duo, who was working in the Rs 2.5 crore worth company for the last one year, also hacked into its server and rendered it non-functional for a week. One of the accused Pradeep is a B.Tech holder while the other had passed a hacker’s course.
“They then called the owner asking for a ransom of `4 lakh to get the server to again.
The owner filed a case and after a detailed probe, the duo was held in Kaloor on Monday morning,” the official said.
They were lured into a trap by the cops who asked the owner to offer them the cash after asking the duo to come to Kaloor.