17-year-old boy hacks famous coffee chain system to treat his pals

A 17-year-old Chartered Accountant (CA) aspirant hacked into the system of a city-based coffee shop and transferred the establishment's gift card money into his own. The incident took place on September 1, however, after a day-long hearing the teenager was found to be guilty by Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) November 27.

The teen had allegedly confessed to committing the crime to spend money on friends for partying, while the JJB asked him to sign a bond of good behaviour for ₹15,000 for a year and undergo counselling at an NGO for two years.

The preliminary probe revealed that the teen had transferred gift card money of the customers across the country, duping them all, following which he was booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Information Technology (IT) Act by Cyber Police and later taken into custody.

According to police sources, a coffee shop customer and gift card holder observed that the money loaded in his account was exhausted despite not being used. When the customer approached the shop, the staffer realised a number of gift cards were exhausted in the same manner. Acting on this Information, a complaint was lodged with Cyber Police Station at Bandra Kurla Complex on September 28.

Cyber police under Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber), Rashmi Karandikar, had investigated the matter. Based on technical intelligence, police tracked down the locality but had to conduct a recce of four days in order to zero in on the minor accused.

The police checked the CCTV camera footage. The computer which was hacked into and learnt that credit was transferred from another customer's gift card and they traced the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the accused to Orissa. The accused had bounced the IP address.

The teenager told police that he would go to the coffee shop where, using a duplicate SIM card, he would transfer money from the shop gift card to his own. He told police that he had learnt about the hacking method by watching online tutorial videos.

The 17-year-old told them that he wanted the money to treat his friends at a fancy coffee shop and show off as he scored good grades in the class XII examinations, which he cleared recently. However, he had no criminal intention.