NEW DELHI: Conmen hacked into the credit card account of former economic affairs secretary R Gopalan and took away Rs 5.96 lakh in several transactions made within an hour, after ingeniously obtaining card codes from the retired top bureaucrat, police said.

Ironically, Gopalan had earlier served as secretary, department of financial services, which oversees the banking sector. An MBA from Harvard, he was a prominent bureaucrat in the finance ministry during Pranab Mukherjee’s tenure and retired in 2012.

In his complaint to the joint police commissioner last week, Gopalan said a trickster first called him from a Delhi number (865599****) posing as a bank representative. The caller said a transaction had been made on his credit card for a Delhi-Pune flight booking for one Sandeep Kumar. The caller said around Rs 7,700 had been spent through his Visa card.

“When I told the caller that I had not carried out the transaction, he said he would reverse it. He reeled out my date of birth and my mother's name and said he had sent me an email in this connection. Once I received the email, the call asked me to confirm the three-digit code of my credit card, which I did,” Gapalan victim said.

The caller further told Gopalan that he would block further transactions and asked him for the three-digit code of his wife’s Visa card as well.

Around 3pm the same day, Gopalan received a text message giving a “one time password” to be used to carry out IVR transactions or to generate a 3D secure PIN. When the victim tried to call the person on the number, it was found switched off.

This message was followed by transaction alerts of Rs 5.5 lakh, Rs 19,000 and Rs 15,000. Subsequently, seven more transactions each for Rs 1,000 were made from the credit card in favour of ‘Pay TM’. All these transactions were completed before 4pm.

For each of these transactions, Gopalan got a message in his email account from the authentic bank’s email ID after which he immediately informed the credit card division of the bank and the police, which subsequently registered an FIR.

The case is being handled by the crime branch, which is trying to trace the IP addresses used to carry out the transactions. The accounts where the money was transferred to were probably opened using fake documents, sources said.