Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal's Navi Technologies loses ₹14.26 crore in cyber fraud

Navi Technologies, a financial goods and services firm founded by Sachin Bansal, a co-founder of Flipkart, has been the target of a cyber scam.

The company has claimed that it was defrauded of ₹14.26 crore over 14 days in Dec 2024 by fraudsters who pretended to be clients and leveraged a flaw to commit fraud.

As per a complaint submitted to the Whitefield Cyber Crime Police in Bengaluru by Srinivas Gowda, a vigilance officer for the company, the company allowed consumers to pay for EMIs, phone recharges, and other services through its app between Dec 10 and 24.

However, the fraud was caused by a bug that occurred after a third-party application provider (TPAP) payment gateway gave users the ability to change the amount that needed to be paid following the Navi app procedure. People misused this by using the app to make payments and then going to the TPAP to change the amount to ₹1.

As a result, the transaction was reported successful, and Navi Technologies paid the entire amount that was chosen on their app.

According to the company's lawsuit, this method of operation resulted in a fraud of ₹14.26 crore.

This suggests that the criminals were able to alter the due amount after the transaction was completed on the Navi app by taking advantage of a bug in the third-party payment gateway system.

The miscreants manipulated the payment gateway by initiating payments and altering the amount to ₹1, triggering success reports that caused Navi to process full payments based on the original amounts shown on the app.