The city Cybercrime police have observed a pattern in phishing, e-scams and hacking cases — at the beginning of every month, when salaries are credited into accounts, there is a spurt in such crimes.
On an average, there are eight to 10 cases reported on the first and second of every month. There was a spike in the New Year, with an unusually number of high number of complaints being reported.
According to Cybercrime officials, as many as 22 cases of bank accounts being hacked were reported on January 1 and 2.
Cumulatively, hackers were able to steal ₹5.3 lakh within 48 hours, said a police officer.
It’s still not known if the cases are related, but it’s observed that the hackers operated from Jharkhand. “Over 90% of the victims were engineers, doctors and businessmen,” the officer said, urging citizens not to share with anyone account details like their PIN, even if they claim to be representatives of the bank.
One of the victims — a neuroscience researcher from IISc. — was duped by a man posing as a bank executive who withdrew ₹54,999 from her savings account. In her complaint to the police, she recounted a call she received from an agent claiming she could redeem the points she had won and sought her bank details. “She shared the details and also the OTP (one-time password) with the conman. The fraud came to light when she received a message on her mobile phone shortly after, alerting her that over half a lakh had been withdrawn from her account. She tried to call the agent, but he was suddenly unreachable,” said the officer.
A doctor specialising in geriatric and mental healthcare at NIMHANS fell for a scam when a person, purportedly a representative of the bank, tricked him into divulging his bank details by claiming that his debit cards were being updated. In this case, too, the doctor shared his card details and also the OTP generated by the caller during the online transaction. Within minutes a sum of ₹19,989 was debited from his saving bank account.
“Both victims have savings bank accounts with a nationalised bank which regularly sends reminders to customers warning them not to share such information with anyone,” the officer added.
Hacking of bank accounts
Cybercrime officials say that 95% of the cases they handle pertain to such bank accounts being hacked. Hackers are active during the first week of every month, as that is when salaries are credited, they said.
In a majority of cases, the fraudsters manage to trick people into divulging sensitive information, but there are cases where the accused purchase bank accounts details on the dark web using Bitcoins. “Awareness is the only way to prevent falling prey to such cons,” said Jinendra Khanagavi, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), said. “Tracking down the perpetrators is difficult as a majority of them are operating from Jamtara village in Jharkhand, but the CCB are making efforts to nab them,” he added.
Published - January 27, 2018 11:59 pm IST
