Rs 20 lakh scam: Bank in Chennai fails to freeze scamster's account; directed to pay damages
D Madumita, who holds a savings account in ICICI Bank, Besant Nagar Branch, received a call from an unknown number in July 2023.
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CHENNAI: After a resident of Ayanavaram lost nearly Rs 20 lakh to scamsters — Rs 15 lakh in a loan which she never applied for and nearly Rs 5 lakh that was originally in her account — the Chennai North District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (DCDRC) directed the private bank to close the loan and pay Rs 2 lakh in damages for deficiency of service.
D Madumita, who holds a savings account in ICICI Bank, Besant Nagar Branch, received a call from an unknown number in July 2023. The call directed her to a 'customer care' centre, where a parcel in her name was found containing MDMA drugs, along with her passport, laptop, credit cards, and some clothes. As Madumitha denied any knowledge of the parcel, the call was purportedly diverted to the Mumbai Police to register an FIR as it was a case of identity theft.
The call was then connected to another person who introduced himself as a member of the Mumbai Cyber Crime Department. He told her not to use her phone as her Aadhaar had been used in multiple crimes. As her credentials were mentioned correctly Madumitha had no other go but to trust him.
Later, after sharing her account credentials with him, she found that a Rs 15 lakh loan had been sanctioned in her name and withdrawn by unknown sources along with Rs 4,87,586 she had in her account. Madumitha then contacted cybercrime sleuths who advised her to freeze the account by calling the bank's customer care number. She called the ICICI customer care number and requested that her account as well as the transferee account be frozen. However, only her account was frozen and despite her repeated complaints, her lost money was not recovered.
Pointing out that as per the RBI circular dated July 6, 2017, any loss occurring after the reporting of an unauthorised transaction shall be borne entirely by the bank, the commission headed by president D Gopinath, and members V Ramamurthy and Kavitha Kannan, directed ICICI Bank to close the Rs 15,04,101 loan, which was sanctioned without her consent and siphoned off by scamsters within 30 days.
It also directed to pay Rs 2,00,000 towards compensation for the deficiency of service, mental agony, pain and suffering and a sum of Rs 10,000 towards litigation costs within two months.
