Thane, Dec 17 (TOI): A family vacation turned into a disaster for a mechanical engineer who fell prey to a debit card cloning racket and lost Rs 1.5 lakh in two days. The Thane cyber crime cell is investigating the matter.
On Monday morning, Thane resident Vishwanath Singh (52) was travelling to Umargaon when he received four text messages from Punjab National Bank, alerting him of three withdrawals of Rs 6,520, Rs 10,020 and Rs 8,520 and a transfer of Rs 25,000 to an unknown account. He was shocked as his debit card was in his wallet.
Singh called the customer service and was informed that the money was deducted from his account using the debit card and correct PIN. When Singh insisted that he had not carried out the transactions, the official locked his debit card.
Singh returned to Thane on Tuesday and rushed to the bank. "When I saw my bank statement, I was shocked to see six similar transactions from my account totalling to Rs 1 lakh. There were four ATM withdrawals, two of Rs 10,000 each and two of Rs 15,000 each, in addition to two transfers of Rs 25,000 each to the same unknown account on Sunday. The bank had sent me no alerts of these transactions," Singh told TOI. "When I asked them why I had not received any alerts, they claimed sometimes messages are delivered late due to technical reasons. They later emailed me that they would locate the unknown account as well as find out why I didn't receive the alerts. Their laxity cost me dear. I could have stopped the transactions on Sunday itself, if I had received the messages."
The ATM withdrawals were traced to a kiosk in Delhi and the transfers to a Punjab National Bank account in the name of Bihar resident Raju Kumar, who has withdrawn all the money. "I had gone for a vacation to Delhi in November, where I had used an ATM to withdraw Rs 5,000," Singh said.
"There are a number of modus operandi used in card frauds, including one where a reading strip is placed in the ATM card slot, which when used reads all the details of the user. It is then used to make a new card which is used for the fraud," said an official in the cyber crime department.