We had reported earlier that there are 13 cybercrime cases being registered at the Cybercrime police station of Bangalore every day. Among the many such cases, OTP (online transaction password) scams appears to be the most convenient and common types of fraud. Therefore, it pays to read this news story and also share it among all your friends on social networks, irrespective of jurisdiction.
Take the recent case of Lt. Gen (retired) Raghunath D. The 81-year-old resident of Jayanagar 7th Block received a call from one Raj Kumar Verma on October 4. Claiming to be a Citibank employee, he sent Raghunath into a panic by saying that his bank account had suffered a virus attack. To clear his account of the virus, he asked him for his debit card details. Not knowing what he was upto, he not only gave the details but also the OTP he received from the bank after the criminal had initiated an online money transfer. Within no time, Raghunath’s account lost Rs 1.08 lakh through this wire transfer. The incident occurred between 11pm and 12am.
HDFC BANK
Lets take a much more recent case that occurred on the midnight of November 13, 2018. Sixty-year-old Velayutham, a resident of JC Nagar, held an account with HDFC Bank. On the fateful night, one person claiming to be calling from his bank, asked for his bank details and OTP in just a similar manner as the previous case of Raghunath. The result was that Velayutham lost Rs 17,000 in an illegal online transaction that was made on his behalf. In cases like these, the banks don’t refund your money because it was the fault of the account holder for having given the OTP that is the only firewall preventing any illegal transactions.
ICICI BANK
This fraud occurred on the midnight of November 9, 2018. The innocent victim happened to be Guruprasad S, a 45-year-old resident of Yelahanka. Claiming to be calling from ICICI Bank, he was made to give his debit card details and later the OTP to defraud him with an online transaction worth Rs 25,800.
In all the three cases, the cybercrime cops have registered a case under the Information Technology Act 2000. In another previous story, we had written about how the cops had issued advisories on how to prevent yourself from all sorts of cybercrimes. It pays to read them too.
