Explosive devices have been planted in every single Leela Hotel in India. Or so the email says. The bomb threat, which was sent to the management office of Leela Hotel in Mumbai, is claiming that the anonymous senders will blow up each and every Leela Hotel in the country if the owners fail to pay off the Rs 42 lakh ransom that they are asking for.
Searching for explosive devices
Upon receiving the email, the personnel of the Leela Hotel in Mumbai immediately alerted the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad regarding the bomb threat. After a detailed search all over the hotel, the squad discovered that there were no explosive devices planted in the building. Not a single bomb was found. The email, therefore, was more of a bluff than a threat.
Tracking down email origin
Because it was sent using the payingtime@gmail.com email address, the email threat was obviously forwarded using Google’s Gmail webmail service. The investigators also found out that the management of the Leela Hotel in Mumbai is not the only recipient of the email threat. In fact, it was revealed that the email threat was also sent to the respective email addresses of the Leela Hotel management in Bangalore, Goa, and Kerala.
Fortunately for the owners of the Leela Group of Hotels, the investigators have already tracked down the original location of the email threat by simply tracing the details of its Internet protocol (IP) address. Surprisingly, the IP address was traced to two countries: Kenya and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Since the UAE is a major Internet Exchange Point (IXP) for Kenyan ISPs, the anonymous senders of the email probably forwarded the message to India from Kenya using an IP address from the Middle East.