The Airport police are investigating a threat and extortion case against an email sender for issuing mail threats to senior officials of a private finance company headquartered in Pune, stating he/she will delete the firm’s data by hacking into its database.
The email sender demanded extortion of 11.63 crore coins of a cryptocurrency and threatened to delete the data if it wasn’t paid. According to the police, the company officials had received the mail on November 28, 2021, and the firm immediately safeguarded its data. One of the managers of the company (aged 32) approached the Airport police on Friday and lodged a complaint against the unidentified threat email sender.
TOI on Saturday evening contacted a senior officer with the company but he said, “I am not authorised to speak with the media.”
Senior police inspector Bharat Jadhav of the Airport police said, “The top bosses of the finance company on November 28, 2021, received the email from the same sender. We suspect a hacker could have sent the email.”
Jadhav said, “We are probing into how emails of all the senior officials of the company were compromised.”
“It is a case of threat and attempt to extortion. The company officials did not transfer any cryptocurrency coins to the suspect,” he said, refusing to divulge details of the email to TOI.
