Digitisation blamed for frauds in banks

When all were forced to shift to e-banking and ATM transactions, the gang has got some easy preys and the Bank Fraud wing of the Central Crime Branch of city police say that the complaints regarding such cases have gone up substantially post demonetisation.

In the last eight months, Rs.337 lakhs have been fraudulently taken away from the bank accounts of SBI in Tamil Nadu alone and such wide-spread cases are reported from other bank accounts as well. No amount of awareness creation has helped in educating the public not to share their personal banking information to a third party. 

The conmen, who have employed people speaking different Indian languages, call up their victims under the guise of bank officials and get the card number and OTP for transactions. “The way these gangs operate are professional. 

When we go investigating this case, after identifying the bank account to where the money has been transferred, we find out that most of the account holders are innocent. The gang lure prospective account holders by saying that they could earn money sitting at home if they are ready to work on commission basis,” said Charles Sam Radadorai, AC, Bank Fraud wing said. 

When money is transferred to such an account, fraudsters ask the account holder to transfer the amount to another account after taking his commission. The gang pay up to 10 per cent commission and the account holder transfers the remaining amount. 

“In most of the cases the second account would be that of big trading houses and it becomes even more difficult if some agencies are handling their account. We are asked to move a civil suit to claim back the money,” the official added. 

In a recent case, Rs.50,000 was taken away from the account of an MBA graduate after the fraudsters called him under the guise of bank officials. The youth had to believe the callers as they even gave him the details of his last banking transaction and he provided the personal information. 

In no time Rs. 50,000 was siphoned off from his account and when the investigators followed the money trail, they found the amount had been debited to the account of Airtel. The investigators checked with Airtel and were told that it had been used for recharge of a particular mobile number.

 Police checked the transaction details and found that that mobile number had used it for recharging other cells and several hundred of recharges have been done. They tried to trace the address of the mobile recharge vendor and found that to be a fake address.