A man hit upon a novel idea to stake insurance claim for a ‘lost machine’ while it was still in his possession. A. Sanjeeva Reddy of Krishnarayapuram in the city lodged a complaint with the Arilova police on March 3 that the excavator, which was parked by his brother on the Ramakrishnapuram double road near the Central Prison on February 17, went missing from February 22.
He had purchased the excavator in 2012 after taking Rs.18 lakh as loan from a bank.
He wanted the case to be registered urgently and an FIR filed immediately. The City Police wondered who on earth would steal such a heavy vehicle. They smelt a rat and investigated the case thoroughly and were aghast to find that the complainant’s brother-in-law gave away the excavator on hire in a remote village in Medak and took Rs.50,000 as loan from the party. Thinking that no one would know, the owner hit upon a plan to register a false case and corner the insurance money.
It’s a different matter that the police saw through the game, arrested the accused and seized the excavator!
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Cyber thieves are coming out with new and innovative methods to dupe their prospective ‘clients’. The growing awareness of frauds in lotteries and other schemes seems to have prompted them to take big names from the UNO and the RBI and send mails to gullible customers telling them of transfer of funds released from the British Government and its transfer through the RBI.
The customers are asked to pay upfront 175 Pounds and to give their personal details including bank account number. The receiver is given only 48 hours to make the payment and asked to keep the details confidential, says Ramanarao Mallampalli of Vizianagaram.
The general public can easily be deceived by such mails as the official websites of banks and government organisations are being hacked for s faking these mails as original.
Customers should never reveal their PIN (Personal Identification Number), password, account number to anyone, including bank personnel and officials, when they ask for them over the phone or through SMS, said Circle Head of HDFC Bank RVG Kulkarni at a recent seminar on ‘Secure Banking’ organised by the bank.
Referring to the RBI guidelines on use of PIN-enabled cards only at merchant establishments which came into effect from December 1, 2013, he cautioned customers against telling the merchant or anyone else their PIN but to take the machine and key the number themselves, while taking precautions to ensure that no one was watching them.
