Over a year ago, a drug-related arrest led Bengaluru police to Srikrishna Ramesh. During their investigation, the police found that Ramesh was connected to several other crimes. Now, in a case with political implications, Ramesh stands accused of several charges of cyber fraud, drug peddling via dark net, cryptocurrency theft and hacking the Karnataka government’s e-governance portal.
Leader of opposition in Karnataka Legislative Assembly, Siddaramaiah, recently resurrected the debate about the ‘scam,’ accusing the BJP state government of covering up for Ramesh.
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“There is information about the involvement of influential politicians of Karnataka in Drugs & Bitcoin scam. It is concerning that the investigating officers are trying to close the case to help those politicians. @BJP4India govt should not use their power to divert the investigation. They should ensure that the guilty is punished,” Siddaramaiah tweeted.
Who is Srikrishna Ramesh ?
Ramesh, 25, is a resident of Jayanagar in Bengaluru. Having developed an interest in computers and coding in 4th grade, Ramesh would allegedly hack into the school’s servers to regularly change his grades and attendance records.
Keeping in contact with other black hat hackers -- hackers who try to infiltrate systems for malafide reasons -- using IRC and instant messaging, he adopted the aliases of Big Boss and Rose. Collaborating with Australian hacker, Shane D, the duo allegedly managed to hack PayPal’s transaction system.
While studying at VV Puram College, Ramesh developed a habit of drugs and drinks. Turning to the dark web to order drugs for consumption, he would use Bitcoin to procure them. Ramesh chose to go to Amsterdam for a degree in computer science in 2014.
In 2016, under the pseudonym of Legion, Ramesh allegedly hacked the Twitter accounts of Rahul Gandhi, Vijay Mallya and Barkha Dutt by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the data server.
In 2018, Ramesh was also involved in a case with Mohammed Nalapad, son of MLA N.A. Haris, for assaulting a man in UB City over alleged altercations regarding Ramesh’s hacking activities.
Ramesh at this point had hacked services like mega multiplayer online game Runescape, Indian poker websites, BTC2pm.me, a Bitcoin exchange, Havelock Investment, a stock-trading platform for Bitcoin users, Bangladesh-based exchange Paytiz, MPEX, an illegal cryptocurrency-trading platform, and a Ukrainian platform.
In 2019, Ramesh was implicated along with his associates for funnelling Rs 11.5 crore from the e-governance cell of the Karnataka government and an attempted ransomware attack on an Adani Group company.
(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)
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