Skimming cases and credit card frauds have been making headlines across the country. Here are some interesting cases:
* In July, 2016 the Sadashiva Nagar police, in Bengaluru, arrested 31-year-old Tanzanian national, who was part of an international skimming racket. The accused Paul Colis, a BCA dropout, overstaying after his visa expired, purchased credit and debit card data from a website and cloned the cards using skimming machines at his house in Kothanur. Paul and his associates would buy expensive products online and at showrooms across the country. His luck ran out when the police came across a CCTV footage where Paul was using his mobile phone. From call details police zeroed in on Paul Colis who is part of an international gang and whose associates are now on the run.
* In September 2014, a doctor from a reputed hospital in Hebbal got the shock of her life when she lost Rs. 3.17 lakh after her Canara Bank account was hacked. Over a year and a half hackers had made 371 transactions to recharge their mobile phones, buy train tickets online to Chennai from Bangalore and to pay electric bills. A senior police officer heading the Cyber Crime Division said Hebbal sees an average of at least three such cases per week. Majority of the cyber-related cases are very difficult to investigate, as the accused operate from other countries.
* Stephane R, a student of medicine in Kochi, could not believe his eyes when he found somebody was withdrawing money from his account around midnight recently. He immediately alerted his parents, who called the bank customer care. Too late. “In three minutes, Rs.5,000 had been withdrawn from the account. The bank officials told Stephane’s parents their son may have given the card to his friends. “But we knew that the card was safe with him. Our son knows about the dangers in handing over the card to others,” said his parents. The bank authorities said they were helpless in recovering the money and instead asked Stephane to switch to an ATM card with a chip on it.
* Chhanda Mazumdar, in Kolkata, got a call where the caller identified himself as the staff of a major private sector bank where most of her savings were parked who said some problems had been detected with her debit card.
He asked for her account number saying that he was doing so to confirm that she was indeed the card holder. He also got her to reveal her personal identification number (PIN) saying that it would take around 10 minutes to address the problem after which she would receive a SMS on her phone. “Please do not open the SMS immediately Madam. We will ourselves call you to confirm that the card has been put in order”, the fraudster said. When she did get a call, it was from her joint account holder son in Bangalore. “Mama have you made a big purchase on your debit card just now – Rs 40,000 went out of the account?” he asked even as Mrs Mazumdar froze in fright as slowly the facts sank in.
* Maneesha Taneja, Assistant Professor, Spanish, Delhi University was travelling through South America with a colleague. They took prepaid Forex cards from the SBI as they had been warned to not carry too much cash. In Paraguay they went into a large departmental store to buy drinking water. Her colleague swiped her Forex card. It was declined. Prof Taneja swiped hers. It was declined. They tried credit cards. No luck. They left without the water. A week later while in Argentina her colleague got a message that $333(US) had been withdrawn from her Forex card account from an ATM in Chile! Back in India, the bank said they would look into it. It has been a year but no redressal.
Then two weeks after being back in India she got an SMS that her credit card had been used for an online transaction of $ 900 at an Apple store. She immediately called the concerned bank (Citibank), blocked the card, and lodged a complaint of unlawful usage and phishing. Citibank reversed the transaction. The cards had been cloned in Paraguay in that departmental store as that was the only place the two colleagues had used all the cards together.
* A Mumbai journalist was confounded when his Bank of Baroda debit card, which he had put away in a cupboard for over six months began to be used. For six months the journalist had made no ATM/Debit transactions nor had it been used online for at least 3 years. One day the journalist got a message saying that Rs 100 had been debited. While the journalist, who had a few automated transactions on that account, was trying to figure if this was one of them, about Rs 5,000 was quickly debited as well. The journalist promptly had the money in that account transferred into another and also cancelled the debit card. The bank informed that the money had been definitely debited using the debit card details, but it was done through some online payment gateway called WePay. A complaint was lodged and the journalist got the money back.
(Some of the names have been changed)
(Report with inputs from our bureaus in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Kochi)
