A software engineer saw ₹2.16 lakh disappear from his bank account in 14 transactions within two minutes on Monday. The victim, Arjith Saha (name changed), has a salary account in the M.G. Road branch of a private bank.
He immediately alerted the bank, blocked all cards linked to that account, and filed a complaint with the jurisdictional Halasuru police. To his surprise, he met five people at the police station who were filing similar complaints: all had lost money from the same bank and branch.
While at the station, a part of the stolen money was credited back to Saha’s account, with a notification about a transaction failure at the payment gateway.
Sumojith , another software engineer with a leading IT firm who has a salary account in the same branch, got an SMS on Monday evening about an online transaction. This was followed by 10 transaction alerts one after the other. At the end of it, the amount debited from his account had added up to ₹1.3 lakh.
A senior police officer at Halasuru police station said, “Nine such cases were have been reported from the same bank in the last few days.”
According to officials, an analysis of the transactions revealed that online transactions were carried out from outside India. In such transactions, there is no need for OTP verification, which, in the normal course, would protect the interests of the account holder.
The hackers targeted customers who had a huge balance in their accounts, with the withdrawal ranging from ₹50,000 to over ₹2 lakh, the officer added.
“An FIR has been registered. We have issued a notice to Citibank seeking an explanation for the fraudulent transactions. After obtaining the necessary details, we will seek the help of our cyber crime counterparts to crack this case,” said the inspector of Halasuru police station.
