Delhi Police has unearthed a major scam involving tens of thousands of pounds with the arrest of a travel agent who allegedly siphoned off ‘mileage points’ of British Airways frequent travellers and redeemed them, a case that has underlined frailty of cyber security.
The accused, identified as Damanpreet Singh owns a travel agency in central Delhi’s Jhandewalan area and used to accumulate and redeem mileage points (Avios) of frequent flyers using multiple fake accounts and then sell the tickets to his clientele.
In a statement, the British Airways said, “We are assisting the police in India with an investigation into alleged fraudulent activity. We would like to reassure customers that none of our systems have been illegally accessed and no Executive Club members have had their data accessed or frequent flyer points stolen.”
According to the police, 32-year-old Singh allegedly used to keep tab on clients who were loyal to British Airways as it would give ‘mileage points’ to such flyers on the basis of distance travelled in a particular year. Those points could again be collectively used as currency for buying fresh tickets pertaining to the same company.
Sources said he has so far stolen around 2 million mileage points and each point is worth around 1.5 pound.